Work With Me
by Flagg1991
Summary: Final sequel to "Come With Me" and "Sleep With Me." Two years after running away from home, Lincoln and Luan live a life of poverty in Los Angeles. When Luan becomes pregnant, Lincoln starts working for a shady restaurant owner, and together they plot a heist that may put Lincoln's new life in danger. Meanwhile, a reunion is set in motion. Cover by Lentex.
1. Night Shift

_**Lonely is the night, when you find yourself alone  
Your demons come to light and your mind is not your own  
Lonely is the night, when there's no one left to call  
You feel the time is right, say the writing's on the wall**_

 **\- Billy Squier**

 _ **Listen to the ground  
There is movement all around  
There is something goin' down  
And I can feel it**_

 **\- The Bee Gees**

The black-haired boy sighed, opened the passenger door of the silver minivan, and stepped into the warm Southern California night; a soft breeze redolent of lilac and begonias washed over him, plastering his lank hair to his sweaty forehead. He went around back, opened up the hatch, and grabbed the stack of plastic totes from the cargo bay. The blonde girl came up and stood next to him with a tired exhalation. "You think they're gonna be late?"

He chuckled humorlessly. "Yeah." He slammed the hatch and turned to her. Dark bags hung under her brown eyes, and long strands of hair had escaped her signature ponytail and lay across her sallow forehead. His bad mood softened, and he kissed her cheek. "But on the bright side, Dan'll give us an extra hour."

It was her turn to chuckle. "Yeah, great, how nice of him."

Side-by-side, they crossed the parking lot to the low, metal-roofed warehouse. Two big roll-top doors were open, light spilling onto the concrete. A big man in jeans and a tight black T-shirt stood just outside one of the doors smoking a cigarette, the light glinting on the lens of his glasses. He wore a bandana with an American flag pattern tied tightly around his forehead. His hair was long and black and his skin was the color of burnt coffee. He was full-blooded Chippewa Indian, probably the only 100 percent Native the boy had ever known. "Hey, Freddie!" he grinned as the boy and girl approached. His tone was slow, sleepy, like the tones of most Indians the boy had seen on TV.

"Hey, Allen," the boy said, "how's it going?"

Allen shrugged, a smile slowly spreading across his face. "Hey, it's going." He turned to the girl, and said, in a faux shy schoolboy timbre, "Hiiii, Tina."

"Hi," the girl said. "Dan on a tear again?"

Allen laughed. "Whatever do you mean?"

Inside, a wide space dominated by long rows of scarred wooden tables opened up. People milled around, talking, drinking gas station coffee, one man even eating pizza from a brown box. While the boy took the totes to their usual spot, the girl grabbed two stacks of papers from in front of the office and brought them over, hefting them onto the table with a grunt. The boy pulled out a pocket knife and cut the twine holding the papers in place. They were newspaper inserts. Ads, restaurant menus, fliers...the stuff most people threw away. The girl jumped up onto the table and sat with her legs dangling off and her shoulders slumped. "I am so tired," she said.

"So am I," the boy replied, preparing the inserts, a task which consisted of dividing them into four roughly equal stacks. He grabbed a roll of bags from the top tote; it had a cardboard back with a hole, and he hung it from a metal nub in the table. During the day, the girl worked as a home health aide, at least that's what she called it when she wanted to sound professional: She sat with an old lady while her daughter worked. She grocery shopped, cooked, cleaned, and wiped the occasional ass. The boy worked odd jobs he found on Craigslist. Mend a fence for thirty dollars, help someone move for 250. Today he tore down someone's shed with his bare hands and a sledgehammer and then loaded it into a dump trailer. That job was worth a cool 950, which would go a long way in paying next month's rent. It wasn't much, but it was all he could find; no one wanted to hire a twenty-year-old who looked sixteen with no work experience.

"You have tomorrow off, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, throwing her head back. "Thank God."

"Maybe we can do something," he offered. He finished what he was doing and leaned heavily against the table.

"Sleep?" she asked.

"If that's what you want to..."

"He-ey, Freddie boy."

The boy cringed. The girl looked up and rolled her eyes.

"This dude does _not_ take a fucking hint," the boy sighed.

He put on the biggest smile he could muster and turned just as Bob Gato set a stack of inserts down in the next spot over. A short, weasel-faced man with slicked-back black hair and beady little eyes, Bob reminded him of a snitch from an old gangster movie. His high, chattering voice grated the boy's nerves so badly that by the end of the night he was shaking. It wouldn't be so bad, but the guy _would not_ shut up. From the moment he came through the door to the moment he went _back_ through it, he was talking. Everyone else in the plant had lost their patience and yelled at him. The boy and the girl were the only ones who didn't have the heart, and apparently Bob took that to mean they were his best friends.

"Hey, Bob," the boy said.

"Man, you wouldn't _believe_ the traffic on the 401. I was sitting there for an hour and thinking 'come on, I got places to be!' The papers are gonna be late tonight because of the big game so, hey, that works out to my advantage, you know? Hey, you guys eat? I got some left over pizza in the car if you want it, I don't. Man, I ate so much of that stuff I feel like I'm gonna pop. You ever feel like that, Freddie?" he nudged the boy's stomach.

"Oh, yeah, I feel like I'm going to _pop_ right now," the boy said through clenched teeth _._

Bob looked at the girl. "Tina Marina, no? You want some pizza?"

The girl shook her head and held up her hand. "I'm good. Thanks."

"Alright, suit yourself," Bob said. He brightened. "Hey, you hear about those guys in New York knocked over that armored car? Got away with _fifty thousand_ dollars." He shook his head and chuckled. "That's chump change. I used to work at LAX and I have a buddy who still does. You know that money Americans spend in foreign countries? They ship it back and they keep it in a vault over the weekend. I'm talking cash, traveller's checks, the works. You get a good team of six guys together you can clean 'em out. Easiest twenty million you'll ever make."

Jesus fucking Christ. The boy was about to drop him. "Cool, Bob." He looked at the girl. "Time for a Winston break."

"Asshole," she hissed as he passed. He glanced over his shoulder as Bob moved in and started talking her ear off; she sighed and hung her head. _Sorry, sis_ , he thought with a smile. Outside, he leaned against the building's corrugated metal siding, took a pack of Winstons from his pocket, and shook one out. He plopped it into his mouth and lit it, the harsh smoke filling his lungs and sweeping him into a land of toxic pleasure. He exhaled, the smoke hanging lazily in the warm summer air, and drew another lungful.

"Those things'll kill you."

The boy looked up as Charlie Parker approached. A tall, rail thin man with a patchy mustache and scrawny, tattooed arms poking out from a black cut-off tanktop with a picture of Dale Earnhardt on the front, Charlie was so far the only redneck the boy had met in SoCal. He whipped something out of his pocket, peeled back a lid, and took a pinch from a tin. He put it into his mouth and packed it against his bottom gums with his tongue. "This is better."

The boy snickered and took another drag. "That shit'll rot your face off."

Charlie shrugged. "Ain't got much a face to look at anyway." He passed by and went inside.

The boy finished his cigarette just as the truck bearing the papers pulled in. Damn, earlier than he expected. Inside, Dan Hartman, the supervisor, a self-important middle aged asshole with glasses and a combover, came out of the office. "It's gonna rain tonight so double bag those papers! You _will_ be fined for wet papers!"

Ah, damn it. The boy _hated_ double bagging the papers, because the bags weren't cheap, and they had four hundred fifty copies. 900 fucking bags pissed away in one night. Sighing, he waited with a group for the truck to back in. A guy jumped out, came around, and threw open the back door. The boy waited his turn, then grabbed his share: Three heavy stacks. He carried them over to the table and dropped them. The girl was sitting where he left her. Bob was hurriedly getting his inserts ready. That's what happens when you spend all your time talking, you dumb bastard.

"Alright," the boy said, "lets get this shit done."

They had a system: She drove and he threw. The minivan had a sliding side down that he would leave open as they worked their way through the subdivision they delivered to. He sat in the bucket seat, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and reached into the paper-stuffed tote whenever he needed to. Sometimes he'd grab several and put the surplus on his lap. The Palm Oaks subdivision was crisscrossed with a thousand streets. When they first picked up the route a year ago, they got hopelessly lost every night. Now, after doing it 365 times (more like 385), they could both drive it blindfolded...at night. Neither had ever seen it during the day, and if they found themselves out when the sun came up, they would probably get lost again.

As he threw, the boy studied the houses flanking the wide sidewalks. Stucco, terra-cotta roofs, wavering palms in tiny, sunbaked front lawns. The people who lived here were middle class, and if he had learned one thing since he and the girl ran away from home two years ago, it was that middle class people are often the ones who bellyache the loudest and the fastest. Rich people are so rich they don't care, poor people are so poor they don't care, but middle class people...they're the ones who nitpick every little thing. God forbid a paper land two centimeters to the left or right. Pack of assholes. That didn't stop him from wanting a house here, a big, spacious deal. He'd put up with asshole neighbors for a nice home.

You need money for that though, and money wasn't something they had a lot of.

The girl didn't speak as she navigated through the morass of streets. The radio was barely above a whisper. He thought he recognized a Mick Swagger song, and his mind turned to someone in his past. He shut that out, though; too painful.

They finished just before dawn, and started for home, a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a complex in a bad part of town. At this hour, the only people walking the streets were up to no good: Hookers, pushers, pimps, Jehovah's Witnesses. They arrived home just as the first rays of the sun spread across the skids of San Fernando. Inside, the girl showered while the boy smoked a cigarette in bed. When she came out, she sat down a lit one too. "I'm so sick of this," she said.

"Me too," he said.

She held the cigarette daintily between his fore-and-middle fingers, her elbow resting on her leg. She took a puff and blew the smoke out in a neat plume.

Neither one liked the schedule, or the fact that they had to work _every single night,_ but the paper route was their primary source of income. Without it, they would be fucked.

Shaking her head, she stabbed the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray and laid down. The boy did likewise, putting his arm around her and burying his face in her hair.

"I love you, Luan," he said.

"I love you too, Lincoln," she replied.

Then they slept.


	2. A Chance Encounter

**_Oh, there ain't no rest for the wicked  
Money don't grow on trees  
I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed  
There ain't nothing in this world for free  
Oh no, I can't slow down, I can't hold back  
Though you know, I wish I could  
Oh no there ain't no rest for the wicked  
Until we close our eyes for good_**

 **\- Cage the Elephant**

* * *

Luan Loud came slowly and groggily awake sometime in the afternoon. Her mouth was dry and her skin was flush. When she realized she didn't hear the window A/C running, she sighed. "Lincoln," she said, and rolled over. Lincoln was lying on his back, his arms at his side. His lips were parted and his chest rose and fell gently. "Lincoln!" she slapped his arm, and he jerked. "Huuuuh?" he looked around, his eyes red and distant. "What?" His voice was thick with sleep.

"The air conditioner's busted," she said, "again."

"Call Curly," Lincoln said and rolled over. "I'm not touching that piece of shit."

The air conditioner was a big, bulky window unit that was probably older than both of them combined. The last time it crapped out, Lincoln tried to fix it himself, but it shocked the hell out of him, left a big white blister on his palm that hurt so badly he had to keep ice on it for hours.

"Curly's useless, though," Luan said.

Curly was their landlord, a big fat black man with two chins and beady little eyes. True to the nature of nicknames, he did not, actually, have curly hair. He also wasn't really a landlord; he was a fucking slumlord. It took him _forever_ to get around to fixing anything, and when he did, he did a half-assed job and whatever was broken would wind up breaking again a week later.

"I'm not in the mood to die," Lincoln said.

"Well, I'm not in the mood to _fry_."

Sighing, Lincoln got up, leaned over, and slammed his fist against the A/C's face.

"Damn it, Lincoln, you're gonna break it!"

"It's already broken," he said, hitting it again. "Work, goddamn it."

Luan shook her head. "Nevermind. _I'll_ call Curly." She sat up and grabbed her phone. When she unlocked it, she saw that she had a missed call from Sandra Johnson, Mrs. Matthews' daughter. Mrs. Matthews was the old lady Luan sat with most days. The call came at 1:58. It was 2:25 now. Great. She probably wanted her to come in. Luan didn't

want to...but would. They needed the money, after all.

She called Sandy back and pressed the phone to her ear. The woman answered on the fourth ring. "Hey, Tina."

In Los Angeles, you can find anything if you look hard enough. When they moved here from San Francisco, she and Lincoln found drivers' licenses, birth certificates, and social security cards in the name of Freddie Karen and Tina Gallagher. They weren't cheap, but they were worth it. The only problem was, Luan had not grown entirely accustomed to being called 'Tina.' It was strange and alien even now. She didn't even _look_ like a Tina.

"Yeah, sorry," Luan said. Lincoln glanced over his shoulder. "I was asleep."

"I'm sorry to call you on your day off, but I was wondering if you would be able to pick my niece up at the airport and bring her to my house. I'll pay you for the whole day."

Luan's brows raised. That was fifty bucks. "Sure," she said. "What time?"

"Four."

"Yeah, I can do that."

"Great," Sandy sighed. "Thank you so much. She's coming in from Dallas. Her name's Debbie."

"Alright. I'll get her."

"Thanks again."

"No problem."

Luan hung up and looked at Lincoln. "I'm picking Sandy's niece up at the airport at four. _You_ call Curly."

"Fine."

He grabbed his phone and his cigarettes and went into the kitchen, the sticky linoleum floor popping under his feet. No matter how much they mopped it, it was always tacky. He sat at the dinette table, lit a cigarette, and dialed Curly's number. As he waited for the slumlord son of a bitch to answer (if he even _would_ ), he looked around. They paid a thousand fifty every month, and for what? The place looked like a fucking crack den. The walls were stained from decades of food, dirt, and cigarette smoke, the appliances were forty years old and barely worked, the carpet in the living room was threadbare and discolored from years and years and years of drops, spills, and God knew what else, and the paint was peeling. He hated this fucking place.

Curly answered on the tenth ring. "Yeah?"

"Hey, it's Freddy in 112. Our A/C's out again."

Curly sighed. "Damn. Alright, I'll be there around four."

"Okay. We'll be out so just come in."

"Alright."

"Thanks."

Lincoln hung up and took a drag. Luan came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. Her dyed blonde hair spilled down her shoulders. She went to the fridge, opened it, and took out a can of Coke, which she opened and drank from. She sat across from Lincoln and lit a cigarette, handing him the can when he reached out. "He'll be here around four."

Luan nodded. "You coming with me?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Get dressed, we're leaving soon."

Lincoln was still in his boxers. He took one last puff of his cigarette, stabbed it out, and got up. When he was gone, Luan threw her head back and closed her eyes against the nausea in her stomach. She felt like she was going to puke.

Goddamn heat.

In a few minutes, Lincoln came out of the room in a pair of jeans and a gray tank-top. He sat down and pulled his shoes on. "She paying you extra for this?"

"A whole day."

"That's it?"

Luan shrugged. "What do you want? We're just picking her up and dropping her off."

"Yeah, but this is your day off. _Was_ your day off."

"Whatever. We need the money."

Fifteen minutes later, they left. The day was hot and bright. They both slipped on sunglasses, hers big and his small. The A/C in the van didn't work either, so they rolled the windows down. Lincoln liked fresh air better anyway.

They followed the Ronald Reagan Freeway to the 405. The neighborhoods between there and their building were dirty, depressed, and reminded Lincoln of rap videos he'd seen on VH1. Traffic on the freeway was heavy but moved steadily. As they went, he gazed out at the city huddled against the red afternoon sky. Despite its many, many, many flaws, Lincoln liked L.A. It was warm, glitzy, and always active.

A half an hour later, they pulled into a spot in a vast parking lot across from the main terminal of LAX. Luan killed the engine, grabbed her purse, and took out a piece of paper and a pen. "What are you doing?" Lincoln asked as she wrote.

She capped the pen and held up the paper to show him. DEBBIE was written on it. Understanding, Lincoln nodded.

The terminal was busy. As they threaded their way through the crowds, Luan caught sight of a girl watching them with a furrowed brow: She was standing by the bathrooms, a bag at her feet. Luan glanced at her, then away, then back again as she realized she recognized her. She was tall, roughly Luan's age, and had shoulder length dirty blonde hair and clear blue eyes. Luan _knew_ she knew her, but how?

The crowd thickened, and she lost sight of her. As she waited for Debbie with Lincoln, as she drove her to Sandy's house in Sun Valley, as she drove home, she wracked her brain for how she knew that girl; it was driving her crazy. She told Lincoln and he shrugged. "You must have seen her somewhere before."

Luan didn't think so.

God, she was so familiar.

* * *

Another city, another bust. Who knew finding a good college would be so difficult? Well...finding a _good_ college wasn't the difficult part, it was finding the _right_ college that was hard. The University of California, Los Angeles, was the fifth school in as many days (almost) that Amber Paulson had toured, and it was the fifth one she didn't like. Sure, it was nice and all, but she didn't _click_ with it. Maybe she was being overly picky, but college is serious business, and she intended to treat it as such.

As she waited for her flight to Detroit, standing by the bathrooms, she checked her Facebook. Nothing interesting. Not that there ever was. She put her phone away and people watched instead. Now _that_ was interesting. Take that guy, for instance, the one with the big bald spot in the middle of his head. Bald, that is, except for a tiny tuft of hair just above his forehead. What was up with that? And that woman with the rainbow hair. She struck Amber as a dyke (Amber was a dyke herself, so her gaydar was on point), but rainbow hair? Really?

Amber smiled to herself and scanned the crowd. A girl with long blonde hair and bug-eyed sunglasses weaved her way through the mass. She was facing ahead, so Amber could only see her profile, but something about her rang a bell in Amber's head. _I know her,_ she thought, cocking her head. _But how?_ The girl glanced at her, and Amber blinked. She looked like Luan Loud, Lynn's sister, the one who ran away with...

When Amber saw the boy behind the blonde girl, her jaw dropped and her heart stopped mid-beat. Lincoln Loud was taller than he was when she last saw him, his arms more muscular. His hair was black and his little cowlick was gone, but damned if that wasn't him.

For a moment Amber was completely frozen. Then, as she lost sight of Lincoln, she came to life. She started for him, but a baggage cart blasted by, and she had to wait. When it was past, she fought her way through the crowd, but couldn't find them.

 _Maybe it wasn't them,_ she thought as she returned to the bathroom and picked up her bag. Her heart was racing and her stomach was rolling. No, it _had_ to be them. One lookalike...okay, she could buy that, but _two? Together?_

She was lightheaded. She took out her phone and started to call Lynn, but stopped. What if it _wasn't_ them? What if she was mistaken? She only knew Lincoln and Luan through photographs and a handful of hurried meetings. She didn't want to give Lynn and her family false hope; she and Lynn were no longer together, but she still loved her and cared deeply about her (she loved the other Louds, too). Getting their spirits up only to be wrong was not something she wanted to do. Lincoln and Luan running away had been hard on them. Every time Amber walked into the house after they eloped, she could _feel_ it like a black pall hanging over them.

But they looked _just like_ Lincoln and Luan. She was all but positive it was them.

And if it was? If she could reunite them but didn't?

She looked down at her phone, her lips pursed. She didn't know what to do. Remembering all the pain she'd seen in Lynn's parents eyes, remembering the one and only time she saw Lynn cry (was it on Lincoln's birthday or Luan's?), she made her decision.

She went to her contacts, hit LYNN, and waited.

Lynn answered on the third ring. "Hey, Paulson! How's it hanging? I was just talking about you."

"Lynn..." Amber said.

The other girl detected the seriousness in her voice and her tone sobered. "Yeah?"

Amber sighed. "I think I just saw Lincoln and Luan..."

* * *

Luan didn't feel good. All day she'd been sick to her stomach, and now, as day turned to dusk, it was starting to worry her. Curly fixed the A/C, and the apartment was cool, but even still, she felt shitty, so it couldn't be the heat.

While Lincoln helped one of their neighbors move a couch, she went into the bathroom, grabbed a box from under the sink, and took something out. Five minutes later, she sat on the close toilet lid and waited. Slowly, a line appeared, faint at first, then thickening. Her heart bounced and her hand flew to her mouth.

She was pregnant.


	3. Hope and Fear

When a man says he's going to fix something, he's going to do it...there's no need to remind him every six months. That sunny Saturday morning in late June, Lynn Loud Sr. was finally getting around to fixing the siding along the back of the house. A few panels had come loose during a spring storm and he meant to fix them, but things kept coming up, and when he did have free time, he didn't feel like doing it. Rita hounded him every couple days. "Are you going to fix the siding? Are you going to fix the siding?" Yes, dear, I'm going to fix the siding. Well, today he was fixing it.

It was a relatively simple job. Vinyl siding is like a puzzle: Each successive piece locks into the one below it. In order to get the loose pieces back in, he needed to pry the top ones away from the wall just enough to snap the bottom ones back in. In order to do this, he needed a zip tool, which is a curved piece of metal with a plastic handle. Before he could even start working, he needed to find one. He knew he had at least two, but they were somewhere in the shed, and, well, another thing he'd been meaning to do was clean the shed.

He looked everywhere for that damn zip tool, but he could not find it. Standing in the middle of the shed with his hands on his hips and his brow covered in sweat, he shook his head. You know what...I'll clean the shed first. Fuck it. It has to get done _some_ time, right?

So for the next three and a half hours, he moved boxes, picked things up and put them down, swept, organized, and found one of the zip tools on the floor behind the work bench. _There_ you are. He bent down to pick it up, and caught sight of something in the corner; it was partially covered by a blue plastic pool. It looked like a bike tire. He leaned over, and when his gaze fell across the little license plate above the back tire, he stiffened.

LINCOLN, it said.

Right. Now he remembered. No one wanted that bike. He turned away and wiped his eye. Perfectly good bike and no one wanted it.

Suddenly, he didn't feel like fixing the siding _or_ finishing the shed. He went into the kitchen, the A/C blessedly cool against his hot face, and grabbed a soda from the fridge. "Hey, Dad."

He started and turned. Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table, a notebook open in front of her. For a split second, he almost didn't recognize her: She was 14, her face thinner than it had been when she was little, her hair longer. It's funny how quickly time passes...and freezes when something bad happens. Some days, it was like his life stopped that day two years ago when he woke to find Lincoln and Luan gone. How can life go on when two of your children are missing?

"Hey, honey," he said, and opened his soda. "How's the poem coming?"

"Pretty good," she said.

She was only 14, but she had already sold three poems. Okay, she didn't exactly _sell_ them; she submitted them to non-paying online magazines and they accepted them. Pay or not, that was damn good, and Lynn was proud of her.

"What's it about again?" Lynn asked. "A zombie? A vampire?"

"A haunted house," Lucy replied, bending over her notebook and bringing the tip of her pen to her lips.

"Ah." This poem was her longest. She had been working on it for a week and was still "nowhere near done." Lynn was anxious to read it; though her stuff was uniformly morbid, it was good. It was taking so long because "it's so close to my heart." That made him want to read it even more.

"Dad!" Lana called from the living room.

"Yeah, honey?" he asked, following the sound of her voice. He found her standing at the bottom of the stairs. She and Lola had turned eleven last month. The same age Lincoln was when this all started.

He shook his head.

"The toilet seat's broken."

Lynn blinked. "Broken?"

"Yeah! I don't know why!"

Lynn furrowed his brows. "Oh? You don't?"

A guilty expression crossed her face and she rubbed the back of her neck. "Well...I think maybe it was Lola..."

Great. Thankfully, he had an extra in the shed (he just saw it, actually). "How bad?"

"We just need a new one. I can put it on."

One thing Lana had always loved was working with her hands, building things, repairing things. Lynn always figured it was a phase that she would grow out of, but if it was, she was still smack dab in the middle of it. "Alright," he said. "There's an extra toilet seat in the shed. Go get it and put it on."

"Alright," she grinned, and he couldn't help but wonder if she had broken it on purpose just so she could replace it. She did that sometimes, or so he suspected. She would discover random holes in the walls and then offer to patch them. They were always the size of a small, eleven-year-old fist.

Lana brushed past him on her way to the shed, and Lisa and Lola came down the stairs. "I don't _like_ it," Lola said.

"That's simply too bad," Lisa said. They were within sight now. Lola whipped her head around to her younger sister.

"You've been a scientist for years and you _still_ make explosions. You would _think_ that by now you would have a handle on what you're doing."

"You'd think that being eleven you'd whine less."

"Hey," Lynn said firmly, and both girls looked at him.

Lola smiled prettily. "Hi, Daddy." She was wearing a short pink dress and white leggings.

"What exploded?" Lynn asked.

"It was nothing," Lisa said. "Merely smoke."

"Which damages dresses and hair," Lola pointed out.

"Your hair and dresses are fine," Lisa said, then descended the rest of the stairs.

"Lisa," Lynn said, "you have to be..."

The front door banged open and they all jumped. Lynn stood in the doorway, her face red and her chest heaving. She looked like she'd seen the end of the world, and Lynn Sr.'s heart clutched.

"What is it?" he asked, rushing over.

"It's..." she put her hand to her chest. "I ran all the way here from the park. It's Amber."

Amber Paulson was Lynn's longtime girlfriend. Though they mutually parted ways before graduation, they remained friends, and Lynn Sr. considered her part of the family.

"What?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

Lynn took a deep breath. "She saw Lincoln and Luan."

Everyone gaped.

* * *

Lincoln Loud grabbed the stacks of inserts and carried them over to the table. Luan hung a roll of bags off the metal nub and turned, leaning. She smiled at him, and he smiled at her.

Earlier that afternoon, their elderly neighbors, the Bensons, asked Lincoln to help them move their couch so they could vacuum under it. When they were done, he moved it back. It was a simple twenty minute job, but in that twenty minutes his life changed forever, for when he came back home, Luan was standing in the kitchen, a giddy smile on her face. She threw her arms around his neck and drew him into a hug.

"What?" he asked. "Did we win the lottery?"

"No," she said, "even better."

She handed him the pregnancy test. "I'm pregnant."

Lincoln's eyes widened as he took it and stared down at the two solid lines. For a moment he was frozen, unable to speak, unable to think. Then a smile broke across his face and he swept Luan into a hug. "Oh, my God, this is great!"

"We're going to have a baby," she said in a dreamy tone.

After the heady rush of excitement, though, came the stark realization that he was going to be a father. He was going to have a _child_.

And they couldn't afford a child.

They typically left for the paper plant around midnight, sleeping for a few hours in the evening. While Luan snored gently beside him, Lincoln sat up in bed, smoking cigarettes and running his fingers through his hair. He had to get a day job, hell, _two_ day jobs. He glanced at the sleeping girl next to him, her hand resting next to her face, a smile playing at the corner of her lips, and swallowed hard. He needed to support her. _And_ their baby.

He'd been looking for a day job, though. Shit, you'd expect a city as big as L.A. to be crawling with jobs, but it wasn't. There was a recession on and people were being laid off left and right, businesses were closing, people couldn't eat. The number of homeless people in San Fernando had increased fivefold over the past year, and everywhere you looked there were shuddered buildings.

That didn't matter, though. He had to find something. Anything.

 _This is scary_.

"Hey, Freddie my boy!"

Luan and Lincoln groaned into each other's ear as they released their embrace. Bob came up and sat his totes down next to theirs. "How's it going, Fred? You won't believe this, but some guy shot himself in the head right in the middle of the 401. Cops and ambulances everywhere, it looked like a movie. I didn't see him but there was this big pool of blood on the pavement. Jesus, why not do that inside where no one can see, right? I hope no kids saw that. They'd be scarred for _life_. You know, when I was a kid, I saw a guy get hit by a train. Well, I didn't see it, but I saw the aftermath. Cut him right in half. His top was on one side of the tracks and his bottom was on the other. Oh, man, I had nightmares for years."

Lincoln looked at Luan. "Winston break. You coming with?"

She lowered her head. "I can't."

For a second, Lincoln didn't understand.

"The baby."

Oh. Right.

"Hey, you guys are gonna have a baby? That's great." Bob cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey, everyone!"

"Shhhh!" Lincoln said, gesturing. "Damn, we're not trying to tell everyone."

"Oh, sorry. That's great, though..."

Sorry, sis. Lincoln scurried outside, leaving Luan to the wolves (or weasels), and lit a cigarette. Allen was standing by the front end of his truck talking to Charlie, and Lincoln walked over.

"Hey, Fred," Allen said.

"Still smoking them death sticks?" Charlie asked, and spat tobacco juice onto the ground.

"Smoke 'em while I can afford 'em," Lincoln said.

"Yeah," Allen drew, "I hear that."

"Givin' yourselves cancer one puff at a time," Charlie said, shaking his head sadly.

"What's that in your lip?" Allen asked. "Looks like a wad of gum disease to me."

"Breakfast of champions," Charlie said with a grin.

The truck pulled in, and Lincoln took one last puff and flicked his cigarette aside; it hit the pavement in a shower of embers. "I'll see you guys later."

"Take it easy," Allen said.

"Stopping smoking now prevents cancer and shit," Charlie said.

Lincoln flipped him off, and the redneck cackled laughter.

* * *

Lynn Sr., Rita, and Lynn Jr. sat on the couch, a laptop open on the coffee table before them. Amber Paulson's face filled the screen. "I saw her," she said, "and I thought 'I know her.' Then she looked at me and I swear to God it was her. Then I saw Lincoln. It _had_ to be them."

Rita's grip on Lynn's hand tightened. "This was at the airport?" she asked.

"Yeah, LAX."

"We found Lincoln?" Lucy asked, startling them. Lynn turned to see Lucy, Lisa, Lola, and Lana crowded behind the couch. Each one wore a hopeful expression. Lilly was still upstairs, napping. Even though she was almost six, she needed a mid-afternoon siesta or else she was intolerably cranky.

"Well, we don't know," Lynn said, holding up his hand. "We think so."

"I'm certain it was them, Luce," Amber said. "It had to be."

Rita ran her hand through her hair. "What do we do?"

Lynn sighed. He didn't know. Go out there? But where were they? Los Angeles was a big city, and who's to say they even lived there? Maybe they were passing through. When they were national news for two weeks (following the shootout with that son of a bitch DiRosario), dozens of tips came in placing them in California, mainly around the Bay Area. Lynn hired a private detective out of Oakland, even though Rita was against the idea...given what the last one they hired turned out to be. He turned up nothing. "Hire someone to find them," Lynn finally said.

"Where will that get us?"

Lynn shrugged. "I don't know."

He spent the rest of the afternoon looking up private investigators in the L.A. area. By dusk, he had settled on Stone, Inc, a firm based in Santa Monica. They were fairly inexpensive and the owner, David Stone, had been an FBI agent during the Bush and Obama administrations. He was highly decorated. Lynn would have to wait until Monday to call.

At dinner, no one spoke, but there was an excitement in the air that Lynn could feel as plainly as he could feel the A/C coming from the vent above him. This had been extremely hard on the kids. They missed Lincoln and Luan terribly. Even Lisa, normally so stoic and emotionless, sometimes confided in him that she was depressed over them being gone.

"When are you leaving?" Lynn asked the daughter who bore his name; by the time she was born, he had given up hope of having a son.

"Monday at noon," Lynn said. She was flying to Albany, New York to tour the State University of New York (SUNY) campus there. They had an excellent sports program that Lynn loved. Lynn and Rita wanted to go with her, but they didn't have a sitter, and though Lucy was responsible for 14, she was still only 14, so leaving her in charge was out of the question.

"Let's hope you like it there," Rita said.

"I think I will, Mom."

Another one leaving for college, Lynn thought as he lifted his fork to his lips. That thought made him incredibly sad. His kids were growing up and leaving home, and pretty soon it would be just him and Rita. Wow. Just the two of them all alone in this big house.

He looked at Lynn. She had grown so much over the past couple years. She was no longer the freckle-faced kid she had been just a few short years ago. She was a young woman. Her ponytail was gone, her hair stopping just below her ears. That for some reason signified her growth to him more than anything else. No more freckles, no more ponytail, no more being a cute little kid. She was an adult, just like Lori, Luna, and Leni. Hell, just like Luan. She was nineteen, where ever she was. And Lincoln...God, Lincoln was sixteen. Virtually a man. So much time had passed. He didn't even know what they looked like.

Tears flooded his eyes, and he got up. In his and Rita's room, he put his face in his hands and cried.


	4. Let's Try This Again

On Monday, Lincoln rose just after noon and showered. When he came out, Luan was still snuggled under the covers. He sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. She stirred and opened her eyes. "Hey," she muttered and smiled sleepily.

"Hey," he said. "I'm going to take the van and look for a job. That okay?"

"Umhm," she said and stretched. She usually sat with Mrs. Matthews on Mondays, but Sandy Johnson called yesterday to say that she wouldn't be needed until Tuesday. That was great because Sunday papers were a nightmare (they were twice the size of the normal weekly paper) and Luan was a zombie on Mondays. It was terrible because they needed the money. Well, for right now they were okay, but any other time it would have killed them.

"Alright," he said, leaning over and planting a kiss on her forehead. "I love you."

"I love you too," she said, "daddy."

He smiled goofily and rubbed her arm.

Outside, the day was hot and dry, the breeze like a furnace blast. In the parking lot, a black man leaned into the window of a black Mercedes. Lincoln had seen enough drug deals in his time to know what was happening, so he turned away and got into the van. It wasn't his business, and when something's not your business, you ignore it.

For the next hour and a half, Lincoln trawled the streets of San Fernando, looking for HELP WANTED signs and stopping wherever he saw one. He applied at a Jamaican restaurant (something told him they weren't going to hire him), a dry cleaners, a corner convenience store (where he picked up a pack of cigarettes), and a warehouse. He talked to the foreman at the latter, a big guy in a plaid shirt and a white hardhat. He said he'd give Lincoln a call, but he'd heard _that_ line before.

He was just about to head for home when he spotted another sign, this one in the window of a tiny restaurant on a corner. DONNY'S PIZZA, the lettering above the door said. Might as well try. He parked the van at the curb and got out, finishing a cigarette as he crossed the street. Inside, the place was small with a vinyl tile floor, ripped vinyl booths, and dirty walls. A few people sat in some of the booths. At a counter, Lincoln waited. Through a little door with a circular window, he could hear yelling.

He was just about to leave when a man came through the door. He was short and stooped, his shoulders hunched. His face was like cracked leather and his bristly gray hair was dotted with dying strands of black. He was wearing an oversized black T-shirt with DONNY'S over the left breast. Lincoln put him around sixty.

"Hey," he said in a northeastern accent (New York, maybe?), "can I help you?" He leaned heavily against the counter and rested his chin in his upturned palm, wincing in pain.

"Yeah," Lincoln said, suddenly nervous, "I'm here about the job."

"Job?" the man asked.

"Y-Yeah. The sign. Help wanted."

The man's face brightened. "Oh, _that_ job. You know how to wash dishes?"

Lincoln blinked. "Yeah, sure, I've washed a million dishes before."

"You do any drugs or drink?"

Lincoln shook his head. "I-I smoke."

The man shrugged. "Yeah? So do I. Smoking isn't the problem. You don't smoke a bunch of cigarettes on Friday night and come in late Saturday all hung over and shit. You ever run a dish machine before?"

"No," Lincoln answered truthfully.

"Eh, it's easy. You load it and push a button. You work now?"

"Yeah, I deliver papers."

The man's face crinkled. "Papers? What, are you twelve?" He laughed. "I'm messing with you. You make good money?"

Lincoln shrugged. "Alright money. Me and my girlfriend have a route. We deliver four hundred and fifty papers."

"God _damn,"_ the man whistled. "That's a lotta papers. I'm guess you don't use a bicycle."

"No, our van."

"You do that...what? At night? In the morning?"

"At night," Lincoln said.

The man scrunched his lips. "Can you be on time? I know working nights is a bitch."

Lincoln nodded. "Yeah, I can be here."

Please don't say no, please don't say no, please don't say no...

The man looked thoughtful for a minute. "Alright. Be here tomorrow morning at eight."

Lincoln's heart soared. "Thank you," he said, "I promise, you won't regret it."

"I hope so. I'm Donny, by the way. This is my place."

Donny offered his hand and Lincoln took it. "Freddie."

"Nice to meet you, Freddie. See you tomorrow."

At that moment, 2,300 miles away in a small Michigan town, Lynn Loud Sr. picked up a phone and dialed a number. He was hopeful but apprehensive. He didn't want to get his spirits up just to be let down again.

He didn't think he could handle that.

The line clicked, and a man spoke. "Stone."

* * *

Some days, you just gotta laugh...because it's either that or cry, and when you start crying, all that shit you have bottled deep down inside comes rushing out and you're apt to stick your gun in your mouth. On Monday, June 27, 2022 (hey, where's my flying car?), David Stone dragged himself out of bed, pissed in a broken toilet, and let out a harsh laugh. The rent was due in three days and he didn't have it. He had most of it, but he didn't think the landlord would let him make another partial payment. Stone wasn't afraid of sleeping in the gutter (he'd done _that_ before, and worse), but it's not something he particularly had a boner to do, especially since he operated a business out of his apartment. It'd look really bad if a client came to his office and it was a stack of cardboard boxes in an alley. _Grab that milk crate and have a seat. You want something to drink? I got rain water, some scum outta that puddle over there, and some green bean juice in the bottom of this tin can._ Fuck it. Shit happens.

That was his motto and had been for years. Shit happens. No rhyme, no reason, it just _does_. Twelve years ago, he was a well-paid field agent with the FBI. He was married. Had two kids. Nice house. Nice car. The works. Then some shit happened and he didn't have it anymore. Oh well. It comes and goes, right?

In the cramped, dirty kitchen, Stone reached into a cabinet and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels. He took a dirty glass from the overflowing sink, sat at the dinette table, and poured himself some breakfast. The shit burned on the way down.

He needed some cash, and quick. Maybe he'd knock over a liquor store. Ha! Why not? At least in prison he'd have three hots and a cot. The main thing stopping him was the thought that _maybe_ he'd run into somebody he knew, a guy he put away, and then everyone would know he was a fed. If you were a cop of _any_ sort, prison was the _last_ place you wanted to be. They treated cops worse than child molesters.

Fuck it. He'd be King of the Cardboard Kingdom. Why not? He took another drink and winced. Jesus, this shit's awful. Not that he drank it for the taste, but still.

When the phone in front of him rang, he started, nearly knocking the bottle over. Jesus, that thing still works?

He picked up the handset and put it to his ear. "Stone."

For a moment the line was silent, then a voice came back. "Uh... _Detective_ Stone?"

A customer? Hot shit! "That's me."

"Hi, uh, my name's Lynn Loud, and I'm calling from Michigan."

"Michigan?" Stone asked, lighting a cigarette and inhaling; it was a cheap brand and if he didn't pinch the crease between the filter and the body, the tobacco would spill out. "You couldn't find anyone closer?"

"Uh, well, actually..." the man trailed off and sighed. "Do you have a minute?"

Stone looked at his wrist. He wasn't wearing a watch. "I got a while. Go ahead."

Lynn Loud told him everything. Five years ago, his son and his daughter 'fell in' love. He and his wife didn't approve and ended it. Two years ago, they stole the family van and some money and took off. Now a family friend said they were in L.A.

Stone wasn't an emotional man, but the raw misery in Lynn Loud's voice as he talked about his two missing kids touched him. He thought of his own two kids on the east coast, two thousand miles away in body, two million in spirit. With their mother constantly downtalking him, he didn't stand a chance. They hated his guts. Meanwhile, he'd give his left nut just to see them from afar one time.

When Lynn was done, Stone sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. "Your daughter's friend is _sure_ it was them?"

"Yes, she was positive, and she's a level-headed girl. I-I think it was."

Stone thought for a minute. "Alright. I'll do it. I'll find your kids."

"Do...do you have any mental illnesses?"

Stone blinked. "No. Why?"

"Well, the last private investigator we hired turned out to be a schizophrenic and tried to kill them."

"Sometimes I wish I was skitzo," Stone said, "because skitzos don't have touch with reality, and reality stinks."

"Yes it does," Lynn agreed.

"Alright, I'm going to need some money upfront. I also need you to email me some things. Most recent picture of both...um...profile for each. Who they are, what they like, the kinds of places you think they'd hang out. That sort of thing."

"How much?"

"A thousand."

"Okay. Do you have an account I can transfer it to?"

"Yeah," Stone said, then gave him the information.

When he hung up, Stone took a pull of whisky straight from the bottle and hissed as it burned his throat. Alright. Lincoln and Luan Loud, huh? Two needles in a haystack. Good thing Stone _liked_ a challenge. It kept his mind off of his shit life.

He lit another cigarette, picked the phone back up, and dialed a number. A man answered on the third ring. "Hey, it's Stone."

"Detective."

"I still don't have anything on him. He's a normal guy. For all intents and purposes. Some of the people who come in there are known, but that's not something you can take to court."

The man sighed. "Can't you do anything?"

Stone lit another cigarette. "Like what? Break in and snoop around?"

"Yes."

Stone choked on the smoke. "Hey, look, I can't do that."

"Alright, alright...I just want this asshole taken out. He killed my son."

"I understand that, and I'm sorry, I really am, but, you know...maybe you have the wrong guy for the job."

"I don't want him _killed_. I want him in jail. Where scum like him belongs."

"I'm doing my best."

The man sighed. "I know. I appreciate it. I really do."

"Guys like him are hard to catch, you know? He's been in the business forty years."

"I know."

"I'll do what I can."

"Thank you."

Stone hung up and finished his cigarette. Now, to find those kids.


	5. First Day on the Job

Tuesday morning dawned gray and wet, rain hissing in the streets. The papers were late, they had to double bag them, and they didn't get home until after 6am, two hours before Lincoln had to be at work. "I'll drive you," Luan said as she laid down and yawned. "Just wake me up."

Lincoln stretched out on the bed and dozed for an hour before getting up and jumping in the shower. His eyes were grainy and his head ached, but what was he going to do? Not show up for his first day of work? Not support Luan and their baby?

Wow, _baby_. That never ceased to amaze him. Luan was carrying _his_ child – _their_ child – and in nine months, they would have him or her in their arms. What would it be? A boy would be nice. Lincoln Loud Jr. He liked that. Of course, his legal name would have to be Frederick Karen Jr. Still...a little boy. He wouldn't sneeze at a girl either. Playing tea party and dress up was something he could do and do well. He had plenty of practice with Lola.

He bowed his head when he thought of her. Gee, she and Lana would be eleven now. They were nine when he saw them last. He did his best not to think of his sisters, but when he did, he missed them with a gnawing intensity that _hurt_.

Done, he got out, toweled off, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. He _was_ going to wear a white T, but he had no idea how wet he would get from washing dishes, and he really didn't want to walk around like some bimbo at a wet t-shirt contest.

At 7:30, he woke Luan. He really didn't want to, but Donny's was a mile and a half away and he would never get there in time. "Alright, I'm getting up," she muttered.

While she dressed, he sat at the kitchen table and smoked a cigarette. Man, he was tired. Today was going to _suck_.

"Alright," Luan said, coming out of the bedroom, "let's go, Lincy."

An uncomfortable silence followed as they both remembered another of their sisters. In the van, Luan scratched her head and reversed into the street. "So what's the pay?"

"I don't know," he said, "I guess minimum wage."

She shrugged. "Better than no wage. At least it's guaranteed."

"Yeah," Lincoln said, looking out the rain-sluiced window, "that _is_ nice."

She parked at the curb across from Donny's, and they kissed. "I love you," she said, her eyes shining. "Have a good first day at work."

"I will," he said with a smile. He touched her face and kissed her again. Sometimes in the midst of the daily struggle, Lincoln lost sight of how much he loved her, but in moments like this, it all came back to him, and everything from not having money to living in a dump was all worth it.

Hating to leave her, he got out, crossed the street, and went inside. It was 7:55 by the clock above the counter. The restaurant was empty save for Donny himself, who was bent over the counter, looking at a sheaf of papers. He looked up, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, and grinned. "Whe-el, there he is." He glanced over his shoulder at the clock. "And early too."

Lincoln shrugged. "I'm just excited to get started."

"Alright, well let me show you the ropes."

Lincoln followed Donny around the counter and through the door into the back. What he saw was a typical industrial kitchen like the ones on The Food Channel, only much, much smaller. A grill and a bank of ovens flanked one wall while a sink and what looked like another oven stood along the one across. Two metal prep tables stood in the middle of the space. Along the far wall were two big metal fridges and two freezers. A Hispanic man in white scrubbed the grill with a wire brush while another Hispanic man, also in white, rummaged through one of the fridges.

"That's Hector," Donny said, nodding to the man cleaning the grill; he didn't look up. "That other asshole is Pedro. They don't speak English." Donny spat those last four words with venom. "My great-grandfather came over here from Italy in the thirties, dumb as a box of fucking rocks, and in five years he spoke English better than _you_. These dickheads have been here twenty years a piece and still don't speak it." He said something in Spanish, and Hector turned. He was a thin man with a black mustache. He looked at Lincoln, smiled, and nodded. Lincoln nodded back.

"Yeah, that's right, you dumb fuck," Donny said to Hector, nodding and grinning, "smile and nod." He slapped Lincoln's arm and nodded toward the sink. "Check this out."

There were three sinks side-by-side. One was filled with soapy water, the next with clear water, and the third was empty. "Dishes here," Donny said, pointing at the soapy water, "and cups here," he pointed to the clear water. "With the silverware, you throw it in a tray, spray it off, and run it through." He pointed to another sink it the corner. A hose was attached to the faucet. A spray nozzle was attached to the hose.

Next, Donny showed him the dish washer. It was a boxy machine that looked a lot like an oven. Donny pointed to a button. "You push that to fill her up. Hold it...five, six seconds." He nodded to three racks stacked next to it. "The blue one's for plates, the gray one's for silverware and cups. Put them in, push this button" – here he indicated another button – "and there you go. Got it?"

Lincoln nodded. It seemed simple enough.

"Good boy," Donnie said. "Whatever pans and kitchen shit you gotta wash, just put 'em on that prep table over there and let one of these schnooks put it away. They wouldn't understand if you asked where anyway."

Donny patted Lincoln's shoulder and left. Lincoln went to the sink with the soapy water and looked down at it. A sponge floated among mountains of suds.

Well, he thought, here goes.

He stuck his hands into the water.

* * *

Los Angeles County is _big_ : It is the most populous county in the United States, includes 88 incorporated cities, a shit ton of unincorporated communities, and at 4,083 square miles, is bigger than both Delaware and Rhode Island. David Stone was all too aware of this as he set out to find Lincoln and Luan Loud on the morning of Tuesday, June 28. He was determined, though. Out in Michigan, Lynn Loud and his wife were going through the same thing as he was. Hell, they had it worse, because at least Stone knew where _his_ kids were: Woodlawn, Mass. The Louds weren't even sure Lincoln and Luan were in L.A.; they were going off the word of an eighteen-year-old girl who could very well be mistaken.

Stone operated as though she wasn't. The day was overcast and rainy, not ideal weather for the work at hand, but is anything ever ideal? He left home at eight that morning in his piece of shit Intrepid, a cigarette jutting from his mouth and sunglasses hiding his boozy eyes. The night before, he made a list of every homeless shelter, mission, food bank, free clinic, and church in the area; for the churches, he only focused on the ones advertising help for the poor. His reasoning was this: Lincoln and Luan, wherever they were, would probably be dirt poor. He was sixteen and didn't even finish middle school, she was nineteen and didn't finish high school. Without diplomas, their job choices were severely limited. Of course he could be wrong, but his gut told him he wasn't, and during his years as a cop, he learned to trust his gut.

That morning, he visited three homeless shelters, two food banks, and a free clinic. He flashed a picture of Lincoln and Luan wherever he went: It depicted the two of them sitting side-by-side and not looking happy about it. He was about fourteen and she was sixteen or so. From what Lynn Loud told him, this would have been shortly before they ran away – long after their parents broke up their relationship. She wore a ponytail and a white blouse. He wore an orange polo shirt and had a cowlick. His hair was white, but he didn't look albino, which Stone thought strange.

He got a hit at the food bank. The woman who managed the place thought she recognized them, though she pointed out the boy had black hair and the girl had blonde hair, which confirmed what Amber Paulson said. That was good, because it meant that she had in fact seen a couple that strongly resembled Lincoln and Luan. The woman said they came in two or three times about eight months ago and hadn't been back since. The food bank did not take people's information, so that was that; Stone thanked her for her time and climbed into his car. The food bank was in Sun Valley just off the freeway. Since they came here instead of going to another food bank, he decided that they would have to live (or have lived) close by, therefore he would focus on the surrounding communities: Panorama City, Arleta, Shadow Hills, Pacoima, Mission Hills, and San Fernando.

Just past noon, he hit another food bank, this one in Mission Hills. No go there. Next, he spoke to the head of a homeless shelter in Arleta. Again, nothing. He drove through a few apartment complexes, starting with the Section 8 deals and working his way down. He knew this was an ultimately futile exercise, but he did it anyway because hey, maybe he'd get lucky and see one of them walking around. He stopped in a few restaurants too, since restaurant work was one of the only things open to them.

He got a hit.

The owner of a sandwich shop _thought_ Lincoln applied for a job a while back. Stone asked if he kept applications on file, and he said that he did. Stone got his hopes up, but they crashed back down when the guy looked but couldn't find it. "We throw them out after six months, so it was probably before then."

Shit. At least he knew he was on the right track. _I still got it,_ he thought, feeling proud of himself. Pretty soon, he thought, he would reunite the Loud family.

Donny's closed at three. After finishing the last of the dishes, Lincoln pressed a button on the dish machine and drained it of water. Donny was by the register, counting the day's haul and talking to a man in a suit. When Lincoln walked up, Donny looked at him.

"So," Lincoln asked nervously, "how'd I do?"

"You did good," Donny said. Though the place was small, it got _busy_ during lunch, and Lincoln was barely able to keep up. Keyword _barely_ , because he did. He paid a price though: His shirt was wet, his pants were wet, and even his socks were wet.

"So...do you want me to come back tomorrow?"

Donny cocked his head. "No, I don't, because I don't want my fucking dishes washed." He smiled, then slapped Lincoln on the arm. "Yeah, come back tomorrow. Same time. Can you do that?"

"Sure," Lincoln said happily.

"Good." Donny grabbed the cash from the counter and pulled a couple bills out, which he shoved into Lincoln's hand. "See you tomorrow."

"Thank you."

Outside, Lincoln spotted the van parked across the street. He waited for a truck to pass before crossing. When he got in, Luan leaned over and kissed his cheek. "So, how was your first day?"

"Good," Lincoln said. "I mean, he wants me to come back, so I didn't fuck it up."

"That's good."

Yes it was.

 _Very_ good.


	6. Extra Work

Stone worked methodically. The first week of his search, he hit every restaurant, corner store, and market he could. He showed Lincoln and Luan's photo to a thousand people. None of them recognized them, or if they did, they didn't want to talk. There was one place he didn't go into, and he had good reason.

At night, he sat up in bed, drinking and studying the photograph the way a snob might study fine art. They were cute kids, but the look in their eyes bothered him. It was clear that they were miserable. He couldn't say he blamed their parents for breaking them up, because he didn't, but still, they looked extremely unhappy. Was that a flower on Luan's shirt? Like the kind the fancy assholes wear in their buttonholes? The email Lynn Loud sent said Luan was a big comedian, so something told him if you leaned in to sniff it, it would squirt you with water. That always made him laugh. You think you're about to breathe in the aroma of flower then POW, right in the kisser. It's even funnier when it's not water but something else. Booze, maybe.

He called Lynn Loud on July 1 and told him what he had. "I'm pretty sure they're in the San Fernando area," he said. "I got a couple hits, nothing big, but I can guarantee you there's something out there that'll crack this wide open."

The man sounded hopeful when he thanked Stone, and Stone prayed to God he wouldn't wind up letting him down.

When he wasn't looking for the Louds (which wasn't often), he parked across from a corner pizzeria and watched it. He saw people come and go that had long criminal records and funny nicknames. Nicky the Ax, Tony Bagels, Jimmy the Shark, Pauly Prosciutto. Then there was the guy who owned the joint: Donny D. It was him Stone was interested in; he ordered the death of one of Stone's clients' sons. The client knew it, Stone knew it, but how the fuck could he prove it?

Fate is a fickle thing. Stone was never outside Donny's when the silver minivan pulled up, and the boy with the black hair got out.

* * *

Over the course of two weeks, Lincoln came to learn two things about Donny DeMartini: He liked making fun of people, and he had a temper from hell. Every day, Donny would come into the kitchen and bitch about the customers. If he was _really_ mad, he'd mock them. If one was particularly fat, he would hold his arms out like an ape to simulate a massive stomach and waddle around; if one was particularly old, he would bend at the waist and shuffle his feet. "Poke your head out the door and look at this guy, he's older than fuckin' dirt." Once Lincoln was stacking plates under the front counter when Donny slapped his shoulder. "Here comes Wheels. I let him eat half price." Lincoln looked up to see a youngish man in a wheelchair. He did not exist below the knees. Living the life he had over the past two years, Lincoln had become cynical and just a _little_ mean-spirited: He laughed until tears rolled down his face. Donny just nodded and grinned.

Like every restaurant, Donny's had its regulars. There was Carol, a big, fat woman with bushy red hair who ordered the same thing every day and sent it back almost as often. Every time, Donny would burst through the door, his eyes wide and his face red, a plate clutched in his hand. "This fuckin' bitch says it's cold." There was Mike and his girlfriend Jenny. Jenny was Asian, and Donny called her "Charlie" after Vietnam. Mike, it just so happened, served in Vietnam, and Donny called him "Baby Killer Mike" after what the hippies apparently called the soldiers. Oh. he _hated_ Mike and Jenny, because they would come in two hours before close every single day, get a table, and not leave until a half hour _after_ close. "Look at her," Donny told Lincoln one day, nodding. Jenny was typing on a laptop. "She treats this place like it's her fuckin' office."

"Charge her rent," Lincoln said.

"Pfft, I'm gonna have to. Look at that fuckin' computer, she's got it all plugged in, sucking up my power, using up my Wi-Fi. I oughta turn it off."

Lincoln was there a week before he saw the first argument between Donny and Hector. He didn't know what it was about, because it was all in Spanish, but Donny burst in all red in the face and screamed at the top of his lungs, pointing and gesturing. Hector gestured and yelled back. Donny got in Hector's face, his eyes wide and his lips peeled back over his teeth. Lincoln thought he was going to hit the Mexican. The old man was actually terrifying.

"Goddamn good for nothing fuckin' spics," Donny said in English as he stormed out. For the next hour, Hector slammed things and muttered to himself.

"You got any friends that wanna cook?" Donny asked Lincoln later as he paid him. Fifty dollars cash, every day.

"I don't really have many friends," Lincoln said.

"Good," Donny said. "Keep it that way. People are too much fuckin' trouble."

During this time, Luan's morning sickness increased. Lincoln thought morning sickness, well, only happened in the morning, but that wasn't the case. Sometimes they'd be snuggling in bed in the evening before going to do papers, and she'd have to rush to the bathroom and throw up. Other times, she would be so nauseous that she could do nothing but lie in bed and moan in misery. Though it was normal, it scared Lincoln to see her like that. He worried about her incessantly. He would text her throughout the day to make sure she was alright. On July 7, he was standing in the kitchen at work, texting, when Donny came in. "Hey," Donny said, "what're you doing? I'm not paying you to play twiddly-winks on your phone."

"Sorry," Lincoln said. "It's my girlfriend. She's got real bad morning sickness."

Donny jerked as if struck. "You're gonna have a kid?"

"Yeah," Lincoln said.

Donny smiled. "Well, congratulations. You excited?"

"Yeah, pretty excited." Lincoln put his phone away and sighed. He liked Donny, and he found himself opening up to him. "I'm really nervous, though. I don't...I don't know how I'm going to afford it. Especially when she's out of work."

Donny nodded understandingly. "Yeah, yeah, it's rough. When my kids were born I didn't have a pot to piss it. Now look at me. I got two fuckin' Mexicans and a dining room full of assholes. Life's great."

Lincoln chuckled. "I'll find a way." He went over to the sink and started scrubbing a pot. Donny started to go out the door, but stopped. "You want some extra work?"

Lincoln glanced at him. Extra work? Hell yeah. "Sure."

Donny nodded. "Alright. I got stuff goin' on and I can always use some help."

Lincoln thanked him. After he left, Lincoln went back to scrubbing the pot and rewound Donny's words through his head. _I got stuff goin' on_. What did _that_ mean? What _kind_ of stuff?

Whatever. Money's money, and when you're broke and have a baby on the way, you didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

It was less than an hour before Lincoln got his first "extra" assignment. He was stacking plates under the counter when Donny came over, bent next to him, and laid his hand on his shoulder, startling him. "You wanna make fifty bucks?"

"Yeah," Lincoln said, "I do."

Donny nodded. "Alright. Here."

They both stood, and Donny patted a pizza box sitting on the counter. "Take this to this address." He handed Lincoln a scrap of paper. "When they open the door, tell 'em it's from Donny and walk away. Got it?"

Lincoln nodded. "Sure."

"Alright. The delivery car's out front. You seen it, right? Got the light-up sign on the roof?"

Lincoln had. It was a battered light blue Chevy sedan. "Yeah."

Donny handed him the keys. "I'll cover the dishes while you're gone, but hurry back before lunch."

Nodding, Lincoln picked up the box and almost threw it over his shoulder. It was much lighter than he expected. There was no way in hell there was a pizza inside.

In the car, Lincoln sat the box on the passenger seat, turned the ignition, and waited for a truck to pass before backing out. The whole way there (it was close and he knew where the street was), he wondered what in the hell was in the box. He figured he was delivering a pizza, no big, but there couldn't be a pizza in there...unless it was one of those little Lunchable pizzas. At a red light, his curiosity got the better of him and he opened it. Inside was a bulging envelope. The corner of a hundred dollar bill stuck out of the flap. Lincoln's brow furrowed again, deeper this time. What the hell?

A car behind him honked. The light had turned green. Shaking his head, he drove forward, and reached the address five minutes later: It was an unassuming two story house with a wide front lawn, a flagstone walk, and a big tree overhanging the street. Lincoln parked, grabbed the box, and carried it to the door, wondering just who the hell was going to open it. He knocked, and in seconds, a man appeared. He was about fifty with a pug face, beady eyes, and wispy hair. "Yeah?" he asked in a New York accent.

Lincoln swallowed. "This, uh...this is from Donny."

He handed the man the box, and he took it with a nod. "Thanks."

Lincoln nodded and did exactly what Donny told him to: Turned around and walked away.

The rest of the afternoon he wondered after the box, and the man, but when Donny cashed him out at the end of the day and gave him an extra fifty bucks, it didn't really matter. When something's not your business, you ignore it. And whatever _that_ was earlier, wasn't his business. This money, and Luan (and their baby) _was_.

* * *

Everyone has a millstone hanging around their necks. For Leni Loud, it was her medication.

Anti-psychotic drugs are heavily regulated in the United States, almost as stringently as painkillers. Getting "extra" when you plan to take a trip out of the country is not something that happens. Leni anticipated spending the summer of 2022 with her boyfriend Kevin and his Greenpeace group in the jungles of Guatemala. Unfortunately, there are no pharmacies in the jungles of Guatemala, so if you run out of the pills keeping you from sliding into paranoia and madness, you're pretty much screwed. Her doctor would not give her extra, therefore she was unable to go, which depressed her. She really liked Kevin and wanted to spend time with him. Instead, she was spending the summer at home in Michigan.

Not that that was bad or anything, she loved her family dearly and loved seeing them, but her heart was elsewhere, and when you're twenty-one and in love, your heart is your compass.

She arrived in Detroit on July 1 feeling sad. Nothing, she thought, could make her feel better. When she saw her family clustered together in the terminal, however, a big, sunny smile spread across her face and suddenly Kevin didn't matter quite as much.

They mobbed her, nearly knocking her to the floor, and she laughed. Though she saw them every couple of months, they all looked so much older each time she visited. Especially Mom and Dad. The past couple years had not been easy on them, and both were starting to get gray and wrinkled.

"I missed you guys _so_ much," Leni said, hugging as many of her siblings at once as she could (her record was five, but today she only managed Lucy, Lola, and Lana, Lisa having slipped away; when Leni hugged more than one person, she had a tendency to knock their heads together).

"Hi, sweetie," Dad said, planting a kiss on her forehead. "How was your trip?"

"It was okay," she said, slinging her carry-on over her shoulder, "boring. They showed, like, the _worst_ in-flight movie. I almost fell asleep."

At the baggage carousel, she waited for her bag, grabbed it, then walked with her family outside, answering questions from each of her siblings. Lola thought it was _so_ cool that Leni was interning at a fashion magazine, and Lisa was for some reason keenly interested to hear about Leni's apartment. She got a _really_ good deal on it. It was worth 1,050 a month but she only paid 800.

When they got to Royal Woods, Leni sighed with nostalgic contemplation. Everywhere she looked there was a memory, some good, some not so good, but even the bad ones weren't so bad when you looked at them from a distance. Something might be terrible when you're in the middle of it, but years later, it's no big deal. The only place with bad memories that really bothered her was Royal Woods General Hospital, which she looked away from as they passed. When she was sixteen, she was sent to the psych ward on the fifth floor after she snapped and...

She didn't want to think about it. It was too painful. In many ways. She didn't want to think of how she hurt Luan, and she didn't want to think of Luan period because it had been so long since she saw her and just knowing she couldn't see her face or hear her voice made Leni want to cry. The same with Lincoln. Her baby brother. Both of them gone.

Leni missed them.

When they reached the house, she was in a bad mood. The neighborhood looked different. The house next-door had new owners; old, grumpy Mr. Grouse fell down his basement stairs in the winter of 2021 and was currently in a nursing home somewhere. Leni met the new people once. A husband, wife, and two little boys. It's funny how things change. Mr. Grouse, as curmudgeonly as he was, was a constant through her entire childhood, but things change and the world moves on. One day the people next door would get old or move, and someone else would come along. One day her own parents would get old, and the house she grew up in would belong to someone else, and like everything else in life, she would never be able to go back except in memories.

Lana helped Leni with her bags. The old room she shared with Lori looked largely the same, except emptier. Lori was in Boston; she had a good entry level job at a law firm and a boyfriend that she loved. It wasn't Bobby, of course. Young love rarely lasts and the world moves on. Luna was in Arizona, where she went to school and played in a band. She probably wouldn't be home.

Leni sat heavily on her bed. Things change so fast sometimes. That's why you have to hold on and live in the moment. Don't think about the past, don't think about the future, focus only on the present. And Leni intended to do that, as she did every time she was home.


	7. Family

Donny had a lot of side work. Sometimes, Lincoln did more of that than washing dishes. Every week like clockwork, he took a pizza box full of money to the same house. Every time, the same man answered. "This is from Donny," Lincoln would say, and hand him the box. After the third time, the man started tipping him. A ten here, a twenty there. Lincoln never knew what it was until he was in the car, because you never look a gift horse in the mouth. That was fast becoming one of his mottos. Geez, he had a lot of them nowadays.

Donny's was closed on Sundays. One Saturday in the middle of July, Donny asked Lincoln to come in anyway. Lincoln raised his eyebrow curiously but agreed. He showed up at eight like usual and found Donny in his office off the dining room, a pair of reading glasses on his nose. "Hey, Freddie," he said, looking up. "You wanna work?"

Of course he did. He said as much, and Donny smiled. "Alright, here's what I need you to do..."

Lincoln spent a good part of the afternoon driving around the city with a pizza box. He would go to the door of an address Donny had indicated, knock, and hold out the pizza box. "Donny," he'd say, and whoever came to the door would put money into the box. Only one person refused, a big black guy living in a motel room near the freeway. "I don't have it," he said and slammed the door. In the car, Lincoln put a check next to his name just like Donny told him. Lincoln wasn't stupid, he knew something fishy was going on, but bills were due, and if they didn't pay, the power company would shut off their electricity; the thought of his pregnant girlfriend sweltering in a dark apartment disturbed him. It may have been the year 2022 and people may look at gender roles differently, but he was the man and as far as he was concerned, if he couldn't provide for his family, well, then he _wasn't_ a man.

At the end of the day, Lincoln parked the delivery car in the alley behind Donny's and went in through the back. He found Donny standing at the counter and talking to three men sitting on barstools. They were rough looking but wore designer suits. Lincoln's stomach twisted and he started to sweat as he walked up.

They looked like gangsters.

"Hey," Donny said happily when he saw Lincoln. He threw out his arms and hugged him, shocking him. "You have a good day?"

"Y-Yeah, pretty good." He handed Donny the box and then pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. "One...one didn't have any money."

Donny's brows raised. "He didn't, did he?"

Lincoln squirmed. He did just what Donny said. Was Donny mad at him? "N-No."

"Sounds like he needs someone to convince him he does," one of the men said. He was youngish with a crooked nose and slicked back hair. The guy next to him was older, thinner, with steely gray hair and cold blue eyes. "I bet he has _something_ , and something's better than nothing."

"You did alright, kid," Donny said and patted Lincoln's arm. He took a bill out of his pocket and pressed it into his hand. "Now go home to that girl of yours."

Outside, Lincoln took the bill out of his pocket and looked at it. 100 dollars. 100 dollars for half a day's work.

At home, Luan was taking a nap. Instead of waking her, he took a shower. He sent his mind back over the day's work. A part of him wanted to deny that he knew what he was doing, but he couldn't. He didn't know _exactly_ , but he knew it wasn't innocent. He remembered the men Donny was talking to when he came back to the restaurant. He thought they looked like gangsters.

With the hot water pounding on his head, he had a realization.

They were.

He thought of all the extra money he'd made over the past few weeks, and he had another realization.

He didn't give a shit.

When he got out of the shower, Luan was sitting up in bed. She smiled when he came in. "Hey," she said, "how was work?"

Lincoln shrugged as he sat on the bed next to her. "It was alright."

"What'd you do?"

He hated to lie to her, but something told him he had to. "Deep cleaning."

" _That_ sounds fun."

"It wasn't," he said, and grinned, "but I got it done."

"Well, I'm proud of you."

She leaned forward and they kissed, their tongues meeting and caressing. It had been four years since he and Luan shared their first kiss, and each one since was just as powerful, just as intense. Lincoln touched her face and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him against her; they tumbled back on the bed, their kissing more urgent, more hungry. She slid down her shorts and unzipped his jeans with expert hands. He pulled them down and pressed himself against her moist opening, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he pushed into her. She let out a gasp and wrapped her legs around his waist. She lifted her hips to meet his thrusts, her sighs rising until she was panting heavily. Her silky walls constricted against him, and he moaned, then kissed her bare neck and shoulder.

"I love you, Lincoln," she said as she approached her climax. "Uhhh, I love you!"

"I love you too, Luan," he wheezed. His orgasm was rapidly forming in his loins like hot lead. He swelled against her walls and she bit her lower lip to stifle a scream. He held back as long as he could, but finally, nature won out, and he poured his love into her. Her legs tightened around him and she grabbed handfuls of his shirt. She moaned long and low, bringing her hips up again and again as he filled her.

When it was over, he rolled off and lay next to her, fighting to catch his breath. She took his hands and laced her fingers through his.

"I love making love with you, Lincoln," she said.

"I love it too," he smiled.

"Making babies," she grinned and turned to him.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Better. This morning after you left was _really_ bad. I puked three times and passed out." She chuckled. "This little guy or gal likes making mommy sick."

Every time she referred to herself as mommy or to him as daddy, a dreamy smile crossed his face. It was all still so surreal. He was going to have a baby with the woman he loved, a little boy or girl that was a combination of them, a testament to their dedication to one another. He couldn't wait to hold it in his arms.

"He or she's stubborn like mommy," Lincoln said.

Luan slapped his arm. "Like daddy."

"I'm not stubborn," he said.

"Yes, you are," Luan said.

"Okay, maybe I am a little," he admitted.

"Yes you are."

She rolled over and they kissed. Then she climbed onto him and they made love again, slower this time, more tender. They held hands and rode out their pleasure together, and for that moment, nothing else mattered.

* * *

Lynn Loud Sr. waited each day to hear from David Stone. He knew that the detective would not call every single day, but it could come at any time: When the phone would ring, his heart would stop, and he would imagine picking up the handset and putting it to his ear, into which Stone would utter three simple words: _I got them_. Through July, those words did not come. Stone would check in, explain that he hadn't found anything, and that would be that. "I'm close, though," he would say, "I can _feel_ it."

Lynn tried to distract himself from the constant anticipation in his chest. He fixed the siding, cleaned the shed, and cleaned out both the basement _and_ the attic. His daughters came and went. Lynn returned from Albany and helped him carry boxes from the basement to the curb; Lana helped him replace a frazzled light fixture in the upstairs hall; and Leni swept the attic while he arranged and rearranged boxes. He was glad for their company. He loved each of them with all of his heart and loved it when they spent time with him. Soon enough, they would start lives of their own and they wouldn't have time for Dad. It was the course of nature, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant to think about.

He hoped Stone found Lincoln and Luan soon. Each day that passed, the ache in his chest grew until one day, he imagined it would kill him, literally kill him. How much stress and grief can one heart stand? He didn't know, but people had endured worse than him, so he figured a lot. The only thing was: Lynn was soft. He knew it. It didn't bother him because that's how he'd always been, it was his way. Being soft, though, meant he could stand less pain than some. He barely made it through the past two years, and just when he was beginning to think he was coming to grips, Amber Paulson called Lynn Jr. with the news that she found Lincoln and Luan...in California, where Lynn had suspected they were since that summer day two years ago when Wayne DiRosario assured him that's where they would go. He hoped she was right. Getting his hopes up only to have them dashed would end him.

Leni enjoyed being home with her siblings. During the day while her parents were at work, she took the van and brought them to fun places. The lake, the ice cream parlor, the mall, the museum. By the middle of the month, she made a decision: She wanted to start a family of her own, and soon. That was a big deal, and she knew she couldn't just jump into it. She had been with Kevin for over a year and really liked him, but was he ready? Would he think it was too soon? She didn't know, and she wouldn't see him for another two months, a long, agonizing wait. If he _was_ ready, then they would try as soon as possible. Leni liked working at the fashion magazine, but she wanted a baby more than anything now; everything else could take a flying leap for all she cared.

Family, Leni knew, is the most important thing in the world. Nothing can compare. Looking at her siblings, she felt so much love and comradery that she couldn't help but want a big family herself with lots and lots of kids who would be close and play together and love each other the way she and her siblings loved each other. The thought brought a dreamy smile to her face. Yes. She wanted that _very_ much. How could one have anything _but_ that?

She hoped her kids were like her siblings: They were all so unique and, like, their own person, and she loved each and every one. She liked painting Lola's nails and talking about glitter; she liked playing in the dirt with Lana; she liked learning things from Lisa. She never liked science in school, but now she was able to appreciate how cool it was. She didn't understand a lot of the more complicated stuff, but the basic stuff was neat. She liked having tea parties with Lilly and watching football with Lynn. Lynn was so _passionate_ , it was cute. She'd yell at the TV and jump up and down when her team made a score.

Being with them, however, only served to spotlight the two empty spaces where Lincoln and Luan should have been. It had been so long since she heard one of Luan's puns, and what she wouldn't give to play a video game with her brother. Just one video game.

She wanted them to come back. Dad said they thought they were in L.A. and they had a cop looking for them, which gave Leni hope, but she remembered all too well the cops looking for them in San Francisco and finding nothing. They all got so hopeful only to be let down. She didn't want that to happen again. She wanted Lincoln and Luan to come home and tell her jokes and play games with her. She bet they had a lot of interesting stories about their life in California. Oh, and about that crazy guy who tried to run them off the road and got in a shootout with them. That was like something from a movie. They had a video of Lincoln shooting the guy, and she wondered how that affected him. He was always so nice and sensitive, she bet it really bothered him. Poor Lincy. If she could she would throw her arms around him and tell him he only did what he had to do and not to be sad, because he was home and everyone loved him so much.

As long as he and Luan weren't here, their family would be incomplete. _Her_ family would be incomplete because her kids would never know their uncle Lincoln and their aunt Luan. And if Lincy and Luan had kids of their own, hers would never know their cousins. Their family would never be as close as they were growing up, and that was depressing. They all had such a beautiful relationship, and she wanted her kids to have the same not only with each other but with their cousins as well.

 _Wherever you guys are, please come home soon._


	8. Making Plans

Some days, Lincoln was so busy doing side work for Donny that his hands never once entered the sink. It was small stuff. Take this here, pick this up there. One Sunday, he came in and found Donny in his office. "You're gonna be picking up payments today like you did a couple weeks ago."

"Alright," Lincoln said. Whatever it took to provide for his growing family.

"I want you to take this." He reached into his desk and Lincoln's eyes widened when he sat a snub-nosed revolver on the desk. It was silver with a black handle. It gleamed in the harsh florescent lighting. Lincoln wasn't afraid of guns: Two years ago, he shot a man three times, once in the head at point blank range. He _was_ , however, unnerved that Donny wanted him to pack heat. That told Lincoln what he was doing carried the possibility for danger. That thought had been at the back of his mind since the day he realized he was working for...what, a mobster? A kingpin?...but the money was so good it blinded him. Now it stared him in the face.

You know what else stared him in the face? Luan and the life growing in her stomach.

Lincoln took the gun and tucked it into his waistband, covering it with his shirt. "Self-defense," Donny said. "L.A.'s a rough place."

No one gave him any problems that day. Even the black guy from before handed his money right over; did he have those stitches above his right eye the last time? Lincoln didn't think so, but it was none of his business.

Even though it was none of his business, he couldn't help but wonder who these people were and why they were paying Donny. He came close to asking him once or twice, but he didn't, because you do your job and that's it. If it isn't your purview, leave it to the guy whose purview it is.

On July 19, Donny sent Lincoln to LAX in his personal car (a gleaming black Lincoln Town Car) to pick up "some VIPs." They were flying in from New York City for some kind of meeting. Lincoln wasn't clear and didn't want to be. When Donny gave him the job, he put his hand on Lincoln's shoulder and looked him right in the eye. "Don't fuck this up, okay? These guys are God."

Lincoln nodded and thanked Donny for trusting him with such a big task. He was scared shitless, though. The whole way there his heart pounded and his stomach rolled with nerves. He waited in the terminal for them with a cardboard sign reading _Caramaza_. The plane landed just after noon, and he recognized them when they departed: Three guys, two in suits and the other in a tracksuit. One was older than God, with a wrinkled face and a balding head. The one in the tracksuit was youngish and handsome with black hair and piercing blue eyes. He's the one who pointed Lincoln out to his pals and came over. "You with the company?"

Lincoln blinked. He had no idea what that meant. "Yes, sir."

"Great. Help us with our bags, will you?"

Each man had one suitcase. Lincoln carried them out to the car and put them into the trunk, then opened the back door for them to enter. He went around the front, slid in behind the wheel, and started for the address Donny gave him, a house in the Hollywood Hills. It was a nerve-wracking trip; he was terrified he'd wreck them or get pulled over or something. As he drove, they talked amongst themselves. He heard a lot that day...drug shipments from Mexico, gun shipments _to_ Mexico, this one getting pinched, that one getting whacked, the feds watching these ones.

The house was actually more of an estate perched on a hill overlooking the city and the hazy Pacific beyond. At the gate, he spoke into an intercom: "Freddie Karen." The gate swung open, and he followed a horseshoe drive to a covered patio. Two big guys in suits were waiting, and when he pulled up, they opened the back doors. Lincoln grabbed the keys, got out, and went around to the trunk, trying to ignore the hard-faced goons watching him with suspicion. He opened the trunk and took the bags out. "Give 'em here," one of the goons said, and Lincoln handed them over without question.

As each of the three men exited the car, they pressed a bill into Lincoln's hand. He nodded and fumbled a thanks. The young guy in the tracksuit was last. "Drive a little faster next time, huh?" He handed him a bill and got out.

As Lincoln navigated the winding road through the canyons, he counted the money.

400 dollars.

400 dollars in tips.

He grinned.

Call him what you will, but he _liked_ working for the mafia.

Luan liked it too. Well, she liked the extra money. When he got home and excitedly showed her the bills, her eyes widened. "Damn, Linc, what are you doing out there?"

"A good job," he said.

She laughed. "I'll say. This is great!"

Less than a week later, after the end of the workday (the dish washing work day), Donny took Lincoln into his office. The old man sat in a swivel chair while Lincoln sat in a padded metal chair like the ones in the dining room. Donny leaned back, kicked his leg up onto his knee, and pulled a cigar out of his desk. He lit it and inhaled. He took another and handed it to Lincoln.

"It's a special day," Donny said.

"Yeah?" Lincoln asked warily. "Why?"

"Remember those guys you picked up at the airport?"

"Yeah."

"They, uh, they're giving us a seat at the table."

Okay. Lincoln had no idea what that meant and he didn't ask.

"Means things are looking up." He took a deep puff of his cigar, and Lincoln lit his, drawing the smoke into his lungs. "You...you like the work I've been having you do?"

Lincoln nodded. "Yes. A lot."

Donny grinned. "That's good." He tipped his ash into a glass ashtray then looked seriously at Lincoln. "Do you know what this is?" He spread his hands.

Lincoln didn't know whether to say yes or no. "I have an idea," he said finally.

Donny nodded slowly. _"La Cosa Nostra_. That's the Italian name. Means 'this thing of ours.' It...it gets a bad rap, you know, 'cause of some bad apples." Donny puffed grandly on his cigar, and Lincoln remembered his. "Every profession has its bad apples, Freddie. Cops. Doctors. Politicians. What we do...yeah, you get some shady types. We're not bloodthirsty monsters like they say we are. Hell, we're the American Dream. We're guys who started from nothing, saw a chance to make money, and went out and took it. That's what you're doing, right?"

Lincoln nodded. It was. _Anything for Luan and our baby._

"Well, there you go. You're a bright kid, Freddie, and I like you. You remind me a lot of me when I was twenty. And you got that girl and that baby coming. I wanna help you, you know, get on your feet. I got work like I been giving you, and I got other stuff, _harder_ stuff. But you need to know something, alright, and I don't say this to offend you, because like I said, I like you, but you're basically scum right now."

Lincoln blinked.

"You are the bottom rung of the ladder. You're a grunt. If someone shot you in your head right now, there'd be a million guys lining up behind you to take your place. You're expendable. This...thing...is about money, Freddie. All about money. I don't care what you saw about family and respect or whatever in the movies. Sure, respect plays a part in it, but money makes the world go 'round. Guys like you are good for taking care of the dirty work, but money flows _to_ you and not _from_ you, and that determines your standing. Do you understand?"

Lincoln nodded even though he didn't entirely.

Donny must have sensed this, because he went on: "A really successful guy, one that goes far, doesn't take jobs, he goes out there and finds his own way of making money. Say you know about someone running dogfights. You go to him, make him an offer, and there you go, you're making money. A good wiseguy makes money and brings a cut in. _That's_ when you really become someone. A good wiseguy has his ear to the ground and he knows what's what and what's going down. Let me ask you: Right this moment, do you have your ear to the ground? Do you know anything going down?"

Lincoln swallowed and wracked his brain. He realized with a flush of panic that he didn't. He was useless and worthless and...

...an image popped into his head. A weasel-faced man with beady eyes talking about LAX.

Donny grinned. "You do, don't you?"

"Well," Lincoln sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I did hear something, but I don't know. The guy might be full of shit."

Donny leaned back and put his cigar into his mouth, clamping it between his teeth. "Tell me."

Lincoln really didn't want to say anything and not have it pan out: He wanted to impress Donny, and he wanted to prove that he wasn't scum. "There's this guy," he said, "he works at the paper plant. He says he used to work at LAX and has a friend who still does. He said they keep a lot of foreign exchange currency in a vault and if you had five or six guys you could clean it out easy."

Donny's eyes widened. "How much?"

"I think he said twenty million."

A ghost of a smile touched the old mobster's lips. "That might be worth looking into. Tell you what, next time you see this guy, talk to him. If he says he's being honest, bring him down here."

"I'll see him tonight," Lincoln said.

"Bring him down tomorrow morning if he's serious." Donny took another puff. "See? This is what I'm talking about, Freddie. Put your ear to the ground and make your own way. _That's_ how you get ahead in this business..."

* * *

Luan Loud parked the van in a slot facing the warehouse and killed the engine. In the passenger seat, Lincoln stretched and yawned. "I hope these papers aren't late tonight."

"Me too," she said and drummed her fingers on the wheel. The moment she found out she was pregnant, she quit smoking, and while it was a lot easier than she anticipated, she really wanted a cigarette. She was tired and sick. Over the past couple weeks, she'd discovered that she had good days and bad days. On the good days, she would be sick once and feel relatively fine. On the bad ones, she puked again and again and felt like crap. She had an appointment with her OB on July 6, and as far as they could tell, everything was normal; little whatever-gender-it-was just like torturing mommy.

She smiled at that thought. Mommy. Wow. Her hand crept into Lincoln's, and he looked at her. "I love you," she said.

"I love you too," he replied.

She sighed contentedly. "Let's go do these fucking papers so we can go home."

They got out and crossed the parking lot hand-in-hand. Allen was standing by the roll-top door, a cigarette jutting out of his mouth. "Freddie and Tina," he said, "back for more."

"You know us," Luan said, "we just love newspapers."

"I don't," Allen said.

Inside, Lincoln grabbed the inserts and took them over to their usual spot. Luan sat on the table while he got them ready; he did so without looking at them, for he was watching the door, waiting for Bob. Wouldn't it be great if the one night Lincoln actually wanted him around, he didn't come in?

Five minutes later, as Lincoln fought down his anxiety, Bob came strolling through the door. He was wearing black jeans and a black short-sleeved button-up. Lincoln breathed a sigh of relief. Now let's just hope he wasn't full of shit.

"Freddie!" Bob called.

"Oh, God," Luan sighed, bowing her head.

"Hey, Bob," Lincoln said happily when Bob walked up. "How's it going?"

"Going good. Not much traffic tonight, thank God, I was running late. Can you believe I forgot to set my alarm? I've been doing this every night for six years, no breaks at all, and it just slipped my mind. Funny, huh? I heard of brain farts, but that was a _real_ brain fart, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah, I do," Lincoln said, glancing over his shoulder; Luan was talking to Vicky Conner, a rough looking woman with red hair and blue eyes. Lincoln turned and looked at Bob. "I need to talk to you."

"Yeah, sure, okay," Bob said, his brow furrowing slightly.

"Come over here," Lincoln said, gesturing past Bob to the corner of the table. They walked over.

"What's up, Freddie?" Bob asked curiously.

Lincoln looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. "You said something about LAX a while back. Some money in a vault."

Bob's face brightened. "Yeah, the exchange currency, comes over from Asia, you know, American tourists spending money in Thailand and Vietnam and shit. Stays in a vault all weekend."

"You're serious? I mean..."

Bob nodded. "Yeah, like I said, you get some guys together, you can go in there and wipe 'em out. Why? You know someone? Me and my buddy used to plan it out all the time, it'd be real easy, go in and come back out. That's all."

Lincoln nodded. "Yeah," he said, "I know someone who might be interested. If you're serious."

Bob held up two fingers. "Scout's honor. The set-up they got in there's so outdated it might as well be 1978."

"You know a placed Donny's on Sixth Street?"

"Yeah, I think I might have seen something like that."

"Come down there tomorrow about eight."

"Alright, sure. I tell you, Freddie, _millions_." He rubbed his fingers together. "You can split it ten ways and still retire on it."

The rest of the night, Lincoln couldn't help feeling proud of himself. If this panned out, he would prove that he could earn, and from there, the sky was the limit.

The next morning, Lincoln walked through the door to Donny's at 7:45. Donny was sitting at the counter and reading the paper. He looked up when the bell over the door rang. "Hey, Freddie," he said, "you're early."

Lincoln walked over to the counter and leaned over. Donny sat the paper aside. "Did you talk to him?"

"Yeah," Lincoln said, "I told him to come down around eight."

"He's serious?"

"Sounds like it."

Donny grinned and nodded. "Good."

Less than ten minutes later, the bell rang and Lincoln turned to see Bob in the doorway. He was wearing black jeans (probably the same he was wearing the night before) and a black leather jacket. He looked nervously around, saw Lincoln, and smiled. "That him?" Donny asked.

"Yeah," Lincoln said, "Bob."

"Freddie, how's it going?" Bob asked, coming over.

"Alright, Bob. This is Donny."

"Bob, nice to meet you," Bob said, offering Donny his hand over the counter. They shook.

"Let's go back to my office," Donny said, getting up, "and we'll talk, alright?"

Lincoln and Bob followed Donny into his office. Lincoln closed and locked the door behind him while Bob sat.

"So," Donny said, leaning back, "Freddie here's been talking about LAX and vaults and millions of dollars..."

"Yeah," Bob said, leaning forward and clasping his hands together, "like I was telling him, all the currency our people spend in Asia comes back on Asian-American Airlines and goes into a vault. Totally untraceable."

"Where's this vault?"

"In a building off to the side behind Terminal A. Real isolated."

"When does the money come in?"

"Second Friday of every month. It comes in, goes in the vault, and stays there until Monday. My buddy's a security guard and he works weekends there, so we got him on the inside. We planned this a hundred times. Alright, there's a loading dock. You get a truck, van, whatever, back in, then get out and go in. There's a keycard, but he can leave the door propped open. You do it Sunday, say, 3am, four people are inside, working, you know? Get 'em out of the way, then grab my buddy like he's just another guy, have him open the vault, and just carry it out and put it in the van. Before you go, smash the camera system to bit and boom, no one knows anything."

"That easy?" Donny asked.

Bob grinned. "As 1, 2, 3. I'm telling you, get four, five guys, _good_ guys, and you'll be made in the shade."

Donny stroked his chin. "How much money?"

"About twenty million."

Donny whistled. "That's a hell of a haul."

"Like I told Freddie, you can cut it ten ways and still retire off it."

"Alright," Donny said, "here's what I'm going to do. You talk to your friend and get his end of things set up. At some point I want a sit down with him. I'll talk to some of my guys, get them onboard, then we'll do our thing. You both'll be cut in. I don't know how much yet, because I don't know what we're gonna net, and whatever we do, I have to kick some upstairs. Oh, your friend's security, right? Can you get him to get a map of the building?"

"Sure," Bob said, "I'll talk to him today."

"The next shipment's gonna be...what...August 7?"

"Yeah," Lincoln said, speaking for the first time.

Donny nodded. "That gives us two weeks to work something out. I'd like more, but I think we'll be okay. I'll be in touch."

Bob nodded and got up. Lincoln walked him outside and lit a cigarette. "He mob?" Bob asked.

"No," Lincoln said, "he's a businessman."

Bob cackled laughter. "Hey, well, so am I." He squeezed Lincoln's arm. "See you tonight, huh? We're gonna get stinking rich off of this, I promise. No more fucking newspapers..."

* * *

On the morning of August 1, Lynn Loud Jr. left the house and started jogging. It was a habit she had developed in her sophomore year of high school, when she decided she wanted to join the track and field team; she figured she'd dominated every sport involving a ball, so why not try something new? She never got around to actually doing it, but she discovered that she liked starting the day off with a run. It really got the blood pumping.

Most days, she jogged west to the park, a route she followed today. Once there, she would do a couple dozen pull-ups on the playground monkey bars and then jog around the pond. She liked being in the park before everyone else: It was serene and refreshing, the birds chirping and the grass coated in morning dew.

As she jogged along Franklin Avenue, she let her mind wander. Her thoughts, as they often did, turned to her brother and sister. Dad was hopeful that Amber was right and they were really in L.A. From the beginning, Dad said they were in California, and in the months after they left, there _were_ a lot of sightings in the San Francisco area.

Lynn was not an emotional person. Rather, she was not a _visibly_ emotional person. She kept her feelings to herself. No one knew, therefore, just how much Lincoln and Luan leaving had affected her. She may not have always showed it, but she loved both of them dearly, especially Lincoln. He was always there for her when she wanted to play football or basketball. None of her sisters ever were. Only Lincoln. And while they were opposites, she always felt closer to him than to any of her sisters, except for Lucy, but that didn't really count because they shared a room. And Luan...Lynn secretly loved her corny jokes. She also loved that she always had a smile on her face, and would go out of her way to try and bring a smile to everyone else's too. Sometimes Lynn felt their absence so keenly that it was like a blade in her heart.

She wondered how they were doing and if they were happy. They certainly weren't before they left. She couldn't blame her parents for breaking them up, but she also couldn't blame them for going. They were both so miserable. It was a clusterfuck of a situation. Everyone was right and everyone was wrong.

Lincoln was sixteen now. She wondered what he looked like. Was he still scrawny? Luan was almost twenty. Did she find the sense of humor she lost during those three years after Mom and Dad broke her and Lincoln up? Lynn hoped so. She wanted them back very much, but as long as they were happy wherever they were, Lynn was happy for them.

When she reached the park, she was sweating and her heart pounded pleasantly. She did a dozen pull-ups on the monkey bars. She remembered how, when she was a little girl, she liked to hook her legs through the bars and hang upside-down. She did that now, the blood rushing to her head and her hair almost scraping the ground. Hm. It wasn't as fun as she remembered it being.

"Hey, Loud, _hanging_ out?"

Lynn started, her feet coming loose; she spilled to the ground with a tiny cry and lie in a heap. When she looked up, she saw Amber Paulson grinning down at her. "Morning, chickenshit."

Lynn smiled and got to her feet. "I wasn't scared. You just startled me."

"Uh-huh," Amber said. She grabbed Lynn by the arm and spun her around. "What's this brown patch on the ass of your sweats?"

"Fuck off, bitch," Lynn laughed and pulled away.

"So, how's it going?" Amber asked. "You guys find anything about Lincoln and Luan?"

"Not yet," Lynn said. She crossed her arms and glanced up as a crow flew low overhead. "Mom and Dad have a private investigator looking for them. He's pretty sure he's found people who've seen them."

"That's a start," Amber said. She grabbed hold of the monkey bars and lifted her feet off the ground; for a moment she hung suspended. "Ow," she said, and got her feet back under her.

"What's wrong?" Lynn asked playfully, "spaghetti arms can't support you?"

"Suck my ass, Loud."

A shaft of morning sun caught Amber's face and shimmered in her dirty blonde hair. For a moment, Lynn was lost in her, the first girl she had ever loved. They were together for four and a half years, which in teen years might as well be twenty. This past year, with the future staring them in the face, they decided that a mutual and amicable parting of ways was best: Lynn planned to go to college and play ball. Amber planned to go to college too, but most likely not the same one as Lynn, and the prospect of maintaining a long distance relationship did not appeal to either of them. "Maybe if we're both still single after school we can pick back up," Amber suggested once. Lynn didn't know. Life has a way of carrying people in different directions. She imagined that she and Amber would wind up on opposite sides of the country and talk every once in a while on Facebook or something, the way most childhood couples wound up doing.

"How'd you like SUNY?" Amber asked. By unspoken consent, they had started walking toward the street.

"It was alright," Lynn said. "I mean...I'm not crazy about it."

"Yeah, I feel the same way about UCLA. I might go anyway. I have to go _somewhere_ , right?"

"Yeah...I might go to SUNY. Their sports program is pretty nice."

"Yeah? UCLA's is okay."

They walked and talked for the next two hours, their conversation turning from colleges to memories. Lynn hadn't realized how many they made together. Thinking about it, there was not a single place in Royal Woods that didn't have a memory of Amber attached to it for her. Especially the park. It was there, on a ridge back in the woods, that she and Amber first made love. Lynn smiled at the memory. She was so young and nervous then, a girl of thirteen who was just discovering her sexuality.

She thanked God every day she had Amber there to guide her; she didn't like to think of what it would have been like if she didn't.

Wherever life took her, she realized that she would always love Amber Paulson, and would miss her when life took them in separate directions.

Amber punched Lynn in the arm. "You listening to me or what?"

"No, I tuned your ass out twenty minutes ago," Lynn said and rubbed her arm.

"Thinking of all the make-up and dresses you're going to wear when you get to college, you lipstick lez?"

Lynn punched Amber back. "Ow!"

"I was thinking of all the dick you're going to suck at UCLA."

"Gross."

"You know you like it."

Amber shrugged. "What if I do? What if I wanna suck every dude off I meet?"

"Like you don't already."

Amber whipped her head around. "That hurt, Loud."

"I know," Lynn said, and grinned. "Hey, wanna race to Flip's? Loser buys the Gatorade."

"Oh, you are so on."

Lynn may not have joined the track and field team, but all that jogging paid off in the form of a free Gatorade.


	9. The Heist

_**Money don't get everything it's true**_

 _ **But what it don't get I can't use**_

 _ **I want money**_

 **\- The Flying Lizards**

* * *

David Stone was beginning to think he would _never_ find Lincoln and Luan Loud. He widened the dragnet throughout July, going as far as Santa Monica and then working his way back toward the San Fernando area.

Nothing. They might as well have been ghosts.

He was discouraged and downtrodden on the morning of August 7. He had two cases and neither was going anywhere. He parked across from Donny's at 7:50am and watched it while listening to the oldies station. He wasn't old enough to remember many of the songs, but he liked them nonetheless: They were so happy and innocent and pure, not like the crap today, talking about shooting people and eating people's assholes.

Donny's was closed on Sundays, but people still came and went; Sunday was when Donny DeMartini conducted his _real_ business. Stone grabbed the file he had on Donny from the passenger seat and flipped it open he though he knew it by heart. The first thing inside was a mugshot from 1987: Donny was much younger, his eyes hard and his mouth a narrow slash across his face. There were five of these, the earliest from 1979 and the latest from 2001.

Sixty-five this past Spring, Donny was a captain in the Los Angeles Crime Family. He ran a crew of guys who did everything from money laundering to drug running, and he was damn good at what he did. He'd been to jail a half dozen times since the seventies, and he never did more than a year. _That's_ the hallmark of a good wiseguy.

Here's where Stone came in: Last year, Donny had a kid working for him, nineteen-year-old Steven Carlano. Carlano was a gofer, the lowest guy on the totem pole: Go deliver this message, go pick that money up, etc. Donny made the mistake of trusting Carlano with a small drug shipment: A couple bricks of cocaine meant for a mob-affiliated dealer downtown. Well, Carlano got busted and wound up in jail. He wouldn't talk, but Donny must have figured he did or would, because when he bonded out, he went missing. They found him two weeks later in a vacant lot, shot execution style and chopped into a million little pieces. With Carlano gone, there was no link between Donny and the drugs, but Carlano's father knew what his son was up to (Old man Carlano was a street type himself, and his son had no problem talking to him about work). Stone's mission was to observe Donny DeMartini, take photos, build a case, and get his ass off the streets. The only problem was this: Mob guys, especially the older ones like Donny, are very secretive. That's how they stay in business. They don't wear T-shirts that say I'M IN THE MOB, and digging up hard evidence on them isn't easy.

Stone lit a cigarette and watched the front of the restaurant as a tall, muscular man with a mustache entered. That was Bobby DeSimone. His uncle was a big wig in New York. Stone barely took notice of the boy walking up until he was near the door. Stone didn't know who he was; probably Donny's new gofer.

When the boy turned his head in Stone's direction, the detective gasped and leaned forward. He snatched the picture off the dash and looked at it as the boy went in. It looked like...

...it was. Jesus Christ, it was Lincoln Loud.

* * *

Lincoln wasn't involved in the planning phase until the very end. In fact, he knew nothing about it. He played his part and that was that. He came in, washed dishes, did errands, and took his money. Every Sunday he collected money and ran messages, and every Sunday the same three guys would come into Donny's. A broad guy with a mustache named Bobby, a narrow, bird-faced guy with bushy hair named Angelo, and a boy barely older than Lincoln named Billy. Lincoln overheard them talking about the vault and Asian-American Airlines, but he didn't go out of his way to listen. It was no longer his business. As long as he got a cut.

Saturday, August 6, Donny took him aside and asked him to come in the next morning, the day of the heist. Luan wasn't particularly happy about it. "You work so _much,_ " she said, "I was hoping to spend the day with you."

"I know," he said, feeling genuinely bad; he wanted to spend time with her too. "But we need the money, and this might be worth a lot."

Her brow furrowed.

"Side work," he explained.

She sighed and kissed him. She knew they needed the money and she appreciated that Lincoln was working so hard to provide. He really was the most perfect man on the face of the earth, and whether he worked every day or no day, she loved him and was lucky to have him.

On Sunday morning, Lincoln walked to Donny's. He had taken to carrying the revolver Donny gave him. It made him feel safer.

He reached the restaurant just after eight and went in, tossing an automatic glance around to make sure he wasn't being watched. Inside, Bobby, Angelo, and Billy were sitting at the counter. Donny was bent on the other side; someone said something and he laughed. When he saw Lincoln, he waved. "Hey, Freddie, come over here."

Nervous because he didn't know the three men very well and they all looked rough, Lincoln walked over and sat on the free stool. "Tonight's the big night," Donny said.

"It's a go?" Lincoln asked.

Donny grinned. "Yes, it is. We got a problem, though."

Lincoln's stomach twisted. "What's that?"

"Well," Donny said, "the guy we had gonna drive the crash car can't do it, so we're down a man. We, uh, we were hoping you could do it."

Lincoln's brow furrowed. "Crash car?"

"Yeah," Donny said. "See, we got a van we're gonna load it all up in. We're gonna have a second car to run interference if the cops show up. That means you crash into 'em if you have to, get 'em off our back."

Lincoln's heart dropped. "I, uh, I..."

"You probably won't even hafta do it," Bobby DeSimone said. "Chances are you're just gonna sit there and play with yourself."

"What if I get caught?" Lincoln asked, his heart squeezing at the prospect.

"Well," Donny said, leaning in, "you keep your mouth shut and don't say a word. You do whatever time they give you and that's that. I know your address. I'll make sure your girl gets your half."

Lincoln licked his lips. The thought of being caught and going to jail scared the shit out of him, but if it provided enough money to Luan...wouldn't it be worth it?

"Alright," he said, his stomach sick, "I'll do it."

Donny patted his arm. "Great. Be here at midnight."

On his way out the door, he realized that meant Luan would have to do papers alone. Shit. He couldn't do that to her. She'd done it by herself before, but it wasn't easy on her, and she wasn't pregnant then.

Walking home, he called Bob. He answered on the third ring. "Hey, Freddie! How's it going? Tonight's the night, huh?"

"Look, Bob," Lincoln said, ignoring him, "I – uh – I won't be able to do newspapers tonight. You think you can help Tina?"

Bob's tone sobered. "Yeah, sure, I'll help her roll, hell, load 'em up, too. You in on it?"

"Yeah, I have something going on."

At home, he found Luan eating a sandwich at the dinette table. "Wow, you're early," she said, " _really_ early. Did you even work?"

Lincoln sighed. "No, but I have to work tonight."

Luan's brow furrowed. "When tonight?"

"Midnight to whenever."

"Lincoln," she said firmly, "we have papers."

"I know. I talked to Bob. He's going to help you. All you have to do is throw."

She sighed and bowed her head. "You're working a _lot_. What are you even doing?"

"Restaurant stuff," Lincoln said, shifting in his chair. He lit a cigarette and inhaled. "He's got me learning inventory and stuff, and he's got other businesses he's having me help him with. He says he wants to take a step back and have me manage some of them."

Luan blinked. "Really? That's great!"

The ease with which he conjured that lie disturbed him. "Yeah," he laughed nervously, "it is. Hell, he might even give me the restaurant outright. He's gonna retire soon."

Luan grinned. "I'm proud of you, Lincoln." She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Lincoln wished he could say the same, but he couldn't: Suddenly, he wasn't very proud of himself at all.

* * *

David Stone parked along the curb across from the Oak Village apartment complex and watched Lincoln Loud cross the parking lot, his hands in his pockets and his head bowed. He climbed a set of stairs and let himself into an apartment. When he was out of sight, Stone grabbed the Nikon camera from the passenger seat and went through the photos he'd taken of Lincoln leaving Donny's. One of him glancing over his shoulder, another of him looking forward. Neither one showed his face full on, but as far as he was concerned, they were good enough.

Before he called Lynn Loud, however, he wanted more evidence. Since he had no life to speak of since his wife took the kids and left him, Stone resolved to spend the rest of the day right here, watching.

God was kind to him that day, for less than an hour later, Lincoln and a blonde girl Stone took to be Luan came out of the apartment and climbed into a silver minivan. Stone, who had been slouching, sat up and watched them back out and start heading south. Stone spun a sharp U-turn and followed, getting close enough to see the license plate number, which he committed to memory.

They pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store, and Stone followed, parking across and down from them. He whipped out his camera and started snapping photos as soon as they got out of the van. He took twenty in the time it took them to cross the parking lot. When he checked them over, he was certain the girl was, in fact, Luan Loud.

He called a friend of his at the L.A.P.D. and had him run the plates: The van was registered to a Tina Gallagher. The address was in the Oak Village apartment complex. "Alright," Stone said, "thanks."

An hour later, they came out with a cart full of groceries, and Stone took more pictures. His heart was pounding. _I did it,_ he thought with a smile, _I found them._

Now he would reunite the Loud family.

At home, he uploaded the photos onto the computer and called Lynn Loud. The man answered on the second ring. "Hello?"

"It's Stone," Stone said. He took a deep breath. "I got 'em. I'm about to send you some pictures now."

Over two thousand miles away, Lynn Loud Sr.'s knees went weak and he nearly fell.

* * *

Luan dropped Lincoln off at Donny's on her way to the paper plant. Thankfully, it was a good day and she hadn't felt sick since that afternoon. Before he got out, they kissed. It occurred to him that this might be the last time he would ever see her; if things went bad tonight, he would either wind up dead or in prison. He tenderly touched her face and looked into her eyes, his chest pooling with the most intense love he had ever felt in his life. In an instant, his life with her flashed before his eyes; all the love, all the happiness, all the joy and, yes, even the sorrow. A lump rose in his throat, and for a moment he considered backing out. He couldn't, though. There was too much money at stake. And if he flaked, who knew what Donny would do to him. He didn't think it would be pretty what _ever_ it was.

Luan smiled at him. "I love you," she said, stroking his face.

"I love you too," he said. "More than you'll ever know. You mean the world to me." He touched her growing stomach. "And so does this."

She giggled. "You both mean the world to me too. I'm so lucky to have you, Lincoln, and I thank God every day that I do."

He kissed her hand. If he didn't get out now he probably never would. "I'll see you later," he said.

"Okay," she smiled.

Shades were drawn over Donny's front windows. Inside, Angelo, Bobby, and Billy were standing by the counter. They wore black pants, black shirts, and tactical vests. Lincoln paused.

"Hey, Freddie!" Bobby said. "Go see Donny. He's got something for you."

As he passed the counter, Lincoln noticed the supplies fanned across it, and he swallowed: Walkie talkies, Handcuffs, duct tape, rope, handguns, and five assault rifles. Donny was sitting at his desk and smoking a cigar. Like the others, he was dressed in what Lincoln couldn't help but think of as SWAT chic. When Lincoln entered, Donny nodded. "Got you some clothes," he said, nodding to a chair.

Lincoln changed in the bathroom, pulling on black pants, a black shirt, black combat boots, and a vest. He was wracked with nerves as he did this, and before he left the bathroom, he dry heaved into the toilet. He looked at himself in the mirror. His face was pale and his eyes were hollow.

It was worth it, he told himself.

For Luan.

For his baby.

In the dining room, Donny was leaning against the counter. "Alright," he said when Lincoln walked up. He looked over the faces of each man. Lincoln was encouraged to find that the others looked nervous too. "We all know our parts, right? We gotta be quick about this. No fuck-ups. Bobby and Angelo, the workers are gonna be in the breakroom when we go in. Cuff 'em and _don't let them see your faces_."

Angelo and Bobby both nodded.

Donny turned to Lincoln. "Freddie, you park over by the fence. You'll see it when we go in. There's a red sign with white writing. You stay there and do not get out of the car unless I call you on the walkie talkie, okay? And when you talk – and this goes for all of you – don't come out right and say something. You never know who might be listening."

Everyone nodded.

Donny grinned. "This is gonna be the biggest score of your careers. By this time next year, we're all gonna be in fuckin' _Cancun_."

Lincoln couldn't help but smile despite his nerves.

They left Donny's at 2:45am. The vehicles were parked in the alley: A black Ford Econoline van with rear double doors and a black Chevy Caprice. Lincoln threw his bag into the passenger seat and laid the assault rifle across the back seat, covering it with a wool blanket. He was trembling with nerves.

Before they left, Donny came over and stuck his head through the open driver side window. "You alright, kid?"

Lincoln nodded. "Not gonna lie, I'm nervous."

"Me too. This is _big_. Just relax and think about that money."

"I am."

Donny patted his arm. "Stay strong, Freddie. I don't think we're gonna have any trouble."

With that, Donny climbed into the van and they were off, Lincoln following them through nighttime streets. He turned the radio on to distract himself from his nerves, and found a station playing classic rock.

The drive to LAX took half an hour. Lincoln expected them to pass through the main gate, but instead, the van turned off on a side road that wound away from the terminals and lights. Donny killed the headlights, and Lincoln did likewise.

At a gate, the van paused, and Angelo hopped out with a pair of bolt cutters. He snapped the lock and pushed it open. Lincoln followed the van to a small building with metal siding and a pitched roof. The van spun around and backed into a loading dock. Lincoln looked around, saw a red sigh with white writing hanging from a fence, and drove over. He backed the car to the sign so that the nose faced the van. He killed the engine and reached into his bag, taking out two things: A walkie talkie and a ski mask. He slipped the mask over his head and turned the radio on.

Donny, Angelo, Bobby, and Billy hopped out of the van and went around back. Lincoln watched with a racing heart as they opened up the back doors and grabbed their things: A rifle for each and a bag for each.

The radio crackled. "Hold your position," Donny's voice spoke.

Lincoln picked up the radio and depressed the TALK button. "Holding."

He sat the radio down and watched as the four men went up a set of steps and disappeared through a door. Alone with his thoughts, he sighed and slouched down in the seat.

 _What are you doing?_ an inner voice asked, its tone accusatory.

 _Providing for my family,_ he replied weakly.

 _You're a criminal. You're going to go to jail and how will you provide for your family_ then? _You won't even be around_.

He shoved those thoughts aside and watched the loading dock. Moths danced in the light cast by a lamp hanging over the door. Wouldn't it be nice to be a moth? Moths didn't have to worry about money or providing, they simply _lived_. How liberating that would be!

The first half hour passed sluggishly. Nothing happened. He heard nothing on the radio. What if they ran into trouble in there?

He was beginning to get scared, then the door flew open and one of his guys came out carrying a bag, followed by another, then a third. He sat up straighter and watched as, for the next half hour, Donny and his gang loaded the back of the van. His nerves lessened, and a smile spread across his face. They were doing it! They were fucking doing it! Oh, this was great. He proved he could earn. _He_ was the one who made this possible. All the money in the back of that van was because of him. He lit a cigarette, leaned back, and basked in the warm glow of his accomplishment.

One of the guys jumped off of the loading dock and walked over. Lincoln stuck his head out the window. "We need you," Donny said.

Lincoln blinked. "What about the car?"

"Eh, we're fine. Come on."

Shrugging, Lincoln got out and followed Donny into the building. The door opened onto a long hall flanked with doors. At the end was another door. Just before that, Donny stopped and gestured Lincoln into a small breakroom. When he entered, he started. Five people were lying on the floor, their hands cuffed behind their backs and duct tape covering their mouths. Billy was sitting in a chair, his rifle across his lap. "Take over," Donny said, patting Lincoln's shoulder. He swallowed, and when Billy got up, he went to the chair and sat down. His knees were shaky and when he took the revolver from his waistband, his fingers were trembling.

"I'll be back," Donny said, and disappeared with Billy, leaving Lincoln alone with the hostages. He counted three men and two women. One of the women was hitching as she silently cried, and Lincoln's stomach turned. He tried to ignore her, but seeing her terror broke him.

"Ma'am," he said, leaning forward. "It's gonna be okay. No one's gonna hurt. Just...do what we say."

Those words tasted bitter in his mouth. God, do what we say?

 _I'm a piece of shit,_ he thought.

Here he was, in a ski mask, holding a gun on five innocent – and terrified – people as his gang (and that's what it was, a gang) robbed millions of dollars from a vault. Jesus Christ.

Misery swept through him.

But it was for Luan.

And their baby.

He would make more money from this heist than he would make in ten years working a minimum wage job. Hell, maybe even twenty. They wouldn't have to worry about the power being shut off, they wouldn't have to worry about not having rent money; their son or daughter would have things and not be dirty and poor and watch other kids have nice things while he or she went without.

This was the only way. He was a high school dropout and a loser. He had nothing to offer his family but this.

Sometimes in life, you have to do things you don't like. Lincoln had long known that. This was just another case.

He sat with the hostages for almost half an hour before Donny poked his head in. "Let's roll."

Lincoln tucked his gun into his pants and got up.

"Alright," Donny said, addressing the people on the floor, "no one call the cops for one hour. Got it? One hour. We have your licenses and know where you live. If you wanna play games, we'll come after you. Now come on."

Lincoln followed him into the hall, casting one last glance at the petrified hostages. He felt awful for them.

But he was doing what he had to do.

"We got it," Donny laughed, slapping Lincoln's back. "We fuckin' _got_ it. If you were Italian you'd be made for this, Freddie."

Lincoln nodded. He was glad Donny was impressed.

He followed the van to a warehouse near the water that Donny owned. Inside, the money was transferred to another van. "Angelo and Billy are gonna take care of the van and the car," Donny said, "I'll give you a ride."

Neither one spoke as Donny drove Lincoln home. When they pulled up to Lincoln's apartment, the first faint light of day was touching the eastern sky. "Come in around noon," Donny said. "I'll have a little something for you."

"Thank you," Lincoln said.

"No, thank _you_ ," Donny grinned and squeezed Lincoln's arm. "I'm gonna make sure the big guys know you're the one who brought this in."

Lincoln smiled. "I appreciate it."

Donny nodded. "Now get outta here. Tomorrow's a new day."

* * *

Lincoln woke just before eleven the next morning. Luan was at work, and he vaguely remembered kissing her before she left.

In the living room, he sat on the couch and turned the TV on to Fox News. The headline under the blowhard read ASIAN-AMERICAN AIRLINES HEIST. In smaller script: ROBBERS NET 25 MILLION – LARGEST CASH ROBBERY IN AMERICAN HISTORY. Lincoln's jaw dropped and he leaned forward. His heart pounded and, God help him, a little grin touched his face.

Later, in Donny's office, the old man handed him a bag. "That's your end. 600,000 dollars."

Lincoln's eyes widened and his heart sputtered to a stop in his chest. 600,000 dollars? That was almost half a million!

Donny grinned at the expression on his face. "Don't buy anything big. This job was bigger than I expected, so the heat's gonna be on for a while."

Lincoln nodded, lightheaded. How was he going to explain this to Luan?

"And keep it business as usual, huh? Come in tomorrow at eight and wash dishes. Normal day, you know?"

Lincoln swallowed and nodded. "Alright."

"I put in a good word for you, Freddie," Donny said. "Truth be told, that's worth a hell of a lot more than the money in that bag."

Lincoln believed it.

And he was over the moon.


	10. Reunion

On the afternoon of August 10, Lynn and Rita Loud disembarked their light and entered the main terminal of Los Angeles International Airport. They each had a single carry-on bag. They did not plan to stay long: They would make their case to Lincoln and Luan, and if they chose to stay, they would respect that. Lynn hoped they wouldn't; he wanted them home. How excited everyone would be if they came through the door with Lincoln and Luan in tow. God, when Lynn called them together and explained that Stone had found them, they lost their minds; the screams of delight still rang in his head. Even stoic Lisa let out a cry of joy.

Lynn looked around the terminal and saw a man in a rumpled brown suit standing against the wall and holding a cardboard sign with LOUD scrawled across its face. He was tall with broad shoulders, a salt-and-pepper crewcut, and bleary blue eyes. His face was hard. The face of a cop, Lynn thought.

Lynn took Rita's arm and nodded to the man. "I think that's him."

"Detective Stone?" Lynn asked as they walked up.

The man nodded. "You must be Mr. Loud."

"That's me. This is my wife Rita."

Stone shook with both. His grip was firm and dry.

"How was your flight?" Stone asked as he led them through the building.

"Bumpy," Lynn said. There had been a lot of turbulence over Nevada. Or what Lynn took to be Nevada. The deserts of the American Southwest all look the same from 40,000 feet.

As they made their way through the terminal, Lynn noticed an unusually large number of police officers and sexuirty guards. He pointed it out, and Stone chuckled humorlessly. "There was a big robbery a few days ago," he explained. "Guys got away with 25 million. Can you believe that? That's more money than you can spend."

Stone's car was parked at the curb. He opened the back door, and Lynn and Rita got in. "Where are you staying?" Stone asked as he slipped behind the wheel.

"The Marriot on Mainville Avenue," Lynn said.

Stone nodded. "I know where that is. Do you want to get settled before going to see Lincoln and Luan?"

Lynn glanced at Rita. The same thought flashed between them. "No," Lynn said. "We can do that after. We just...we want to see our kids."

Stone nodded. He knew how they felt.

The drive to the Oak Village apartment complex took nearly an hour and a half: Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the freeway. "L.A. at its finest," Stone said as they waited. When they reached the place, it was four in the afternoon: Lincoln and or Luan were here, Stone noted, because the van was parked in its usual spot.

"That's theirs," Stone said, nodding to the van.

He pulled into an open slot next to it and killed the engine. "You ready?" he asked over his shoulder.

Lynn Loud licked his lips, his stomach suddenly knotted with nerves. Yes, he was ready; no, he was not ready. He wanted nothing more than to see Lincoln and Luan, but what if they didn't want to see them?

"Yes," Rita said for him, "we're ready."

"Alright," Stone said. He got out of the car and they followed him up a staircase. Lincoln and Luan's apartment was at the head of the stairs. The door was green. The number 112 was painted in white. Lynn swallowed hard as he approached it. For a moment, he stood there, terrified of what waited beyond.

He took a deep breath and knocked.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then he heard the sound of footsteps. His heartbeat rose and his stomach clenched. Rita's hand crept into his, and he squeezed it.

The door opened, and Luan was there. Her hair was blonde now, her braces long gone. She was a woman now, and not the little girl she always was in Lynn's memories. She saw them, and her eyes widened, flooding with...was it terror?

"Lincoln!" she screamed, and slammed the door so hard Lynn stumbled back, his heart stopping. He looked at Rita, and then to the door just as it was wrenched open and filled with Lincoln; Lynn noticed the gun in his hand and cringed. Rita let out a sharp cry.

"Whoa, son!" Stone cried, putting his hands out. "Put the gun down."

Lincoln, his eyes hard and his lips a tight line, scanned their faces. He hoped he looked tough, but inside he was scared shitless. After he and Luan left home, their parents hired a hitman to take them out: He tried to run them off the road in Nebraska and then tried to shoot them at a rest stop. Lincoln killed him.

"Get the fuck out of here," he growled.

"Lincoln..." Lynn said, hurt.

Lincoln shoved the gun at him and he fell back. Luan stood behind her brother, her face scrunched with fear. "You already tried to kill us once," he said. "It's not gonna happen again."

Lynn blinked. "Tried to kill you?"

"The hitman," Lincoln said. "The one who tried to shoot us."

"No, God!" Lynn said, "that wasn't a hitman, that was a private investigator. He was supposed to find you but he was crazy. We didn't know."

Something like hope flickered across Lincoln's eyes. Then it was gone. "I don't believe you."

"Honey," Rita said, "we're telling the truth. You can look it up. His name was Wayne DiRosario. He was a nut, he killed ten people before we even hired him." Her eyes were wet with tears. "Look it up."

Lincoln and Luan looked at each other, then Lincoln sighed.

"Anyone carrying a gun?" he asked.

Stone reached into his coat, and Lincoln swung on him, pointing the revolver directly at his head. Stone, impassive, took out his own revolver, grabbed it by the barrel, and handed it to Lincoln handle first. "Your parents have been waiting a long time to see you, kid." Lincoln looked at his mother and father. Tears shone in both their eyes'. "Can we come in?"

* * *

Lynn and Rita sat side-by-side on the couch. Lincoln dragged in a kitchen chair for Stone; brother and sister sat on the coffee table, his arm protectively around her shoulder. What could Lynn say? Where could he even _begin_? He didn't know. His mind was blank. A much larger part of him than he cared to admit thought this day would never come, and now that it was here, he was stricken.

"Nice place," Stone said, looking around.

"It's a dump," Lincoln said.

"No, it's cute," Rita said.

"You want something to drink?" Lincoln asked. He had tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans.

"No," Lynn said, "we..." he trailed off. "We want you to come home."

Lincoln looked at him, his eyes narrowing.

"We were wrong to do what we did," Rita said, "and we're sorry. You can be together if you come home. You can do whatever you want, we won't get in the way." There was a desperate, kneading quality to her voice that hurt Lincoln's heart. He had yet to look directly into their eyes, because he could sense their pain. Seeing it directly would probably kill him. Even over the past two years when he believed they tried to kill him, he never stopped loving them.

"That's a given," Lincoln said, and pulled Luan closer. "We're going to have a baby."

Rita and Lynn both gaped. In his chair, Stone raised his eyebrows slightly but didn't say anything.

"Y-You're pregnant?" Rita asked.

Lincoln nodded.

"How far along?" Lynn asked, recovering from the initial shock.

"Eight weeks," Luan said.

Lynn's eyes darted to his daughter's stomach. Now that she mentioned it, she _did_ have a little bit of a belly. He didn't notice it before.

A grandchild? The thought made him giddy. He could not lie, he wasn't not entirely happy that they had conceived. He hoped that they would take the risks of birth defects into consideration. Nevertheless, his mild annoyance was far outweighed by his joy. Next to him, he sensed Rita felt the same.

"That's great!" she said. "Oh, my God, a grandchild." She smiled, and to Lynn, it did not look forced; it was genuine.

"Thanks," Lincoln said.

"You guys _have_ to come home," Rita said. "We can help you. Everyone misses you so much. It's been so hard on your sisters since you left."

Lincoln and Luan exchanged a sad look. "We miss them too," Lincoln said, glancing down at his lap. "Yeah," Luan said. "How are they?"

"They're excited," Lynn said. "When I told them Detective Stone found you, they all screamed so loud it nearly popped my eardrums." He laughed. "Even Lisa was shrieking."

Lincoln imagined his flat, normally emotionless sister screaming with joy, and smiled. He smiled even wider because he and Luan were the reason she did it. She would be nine now. God, Lisa was nine-years-old. Time really does fly.

"I don't know," Luan said, "we...we're used to being on our own now. We don't have a lot of money, but...we value our freedom."

"That's fine," Lynn said. "You can have freedom. We don't...we don't want to control you, we want you home." His voice broke and he brushed tears from his eyes. Lincoln and Luan both looked at him, their own eyes shimmering with tears now. "That's all we've wanted for two years. For you guys to come home. And now you're going to have a baby and we want to be there. Your sisters want to be there."

Lincoln and Luan looked at each other. Lincoln sighed. "I have a good job out here, though."

"You really don't," Stone said, startling the boy. He forgot he was there. Lincoln looked at him, his eyes narrowing.

"I know who you're working for, and I know what he's got you doing. Listen, Lincoln: Donny's a bad guy. A _real_ bad guy. The last kid he had working for him wound up with a bullet in the back of his head."

Lynn and Rita both looked at each other, concern crossing their faces. Luan pulled slightly away and looked at Lincoln. Lincoln flashed back to the other night, and his brow softened; him holding a gun on innocent people, the woman crying in terror.

"What's he talking about, Lincoln?" Lynn asked. "Who are you working for?"

Lincoln, stricken, opened his mouth.

"It doesn't matter," Stone cut him off. "But if you ask me, you kids would be a _lot_ better off going back to Michigan."

"Please," Rita said, and started to cry. "We want you home so bad."

For a moment, Lincoln sat where he was, unable to move. He looked at Luan, and he saw misery in her eyes. They were so caught in up their own happiness that they never thought how them leaving would affect their parents and their sisters. Lincoln imagined how they all must have felt over the past two years, and his heart broke. He got up, knelt before his mother, and took her in his arms. When he spoke next, he discovered that he was crying too.

"We're sorry," he said, "we're so sorry."

" _I'm_ sorry," Rita said. "I was a bitch and I realize that now. I don't care about anything else, I just want you guys home."

Next to him, Luan hugged their father, tears streaming down her face. Lincoln reached out and squeezed his old man's knee. "We'll come home," he said, "we'll come home right now."

Rita hugged her son close and wept into the crook of his neck. The past two years had been hard on her, but it wasn't until this very moment, holding him, that she realized just how miserable they had really been. Having two of her children – including her only son – gone and lost was hell...a hell she never wanted to experience again. If they wanted, she would let them stay at home forever and ever.

Lincoln barely heard the knock on the door over the sounds of tearful reunion. He let go of his mother, smiled at her, and got up. As he passed Stone, he reached into the small of his back and handed the detective his gun.

At the door, Lincoln opened it.

A team of men in blue windbreakers and baseball caps were waiting. Three letters were written in yellow across the face of each hat. FBI.

His heart dropped into his stomach.

"Frederick Karen?" the man in front asked. He was slight with leathery skin. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses.

"Y-Yeah?"

"I'm Agent Benson with the FBI, and you're under arrest..."


	11. House of Cards

There's an old saying: Even the best laid plans go to shit. The Asian-American Airlines Heist was one such plan. When Bob first met with Donny in July, he told him that the camera system would have to be destroyed. They had a man on the inside, after all, in the form of Bob's friend, Paul Warner, the security guard. It was Warner who left the back door propped open. Donny, perhaps blinded by dollar signs, waved him off, and tasked Bobby DeSimone with ruining the equipment. Bobby DeSimone didn't know much about electronics. Hell, you could say he couldn't tell the difference between a toaster and a calculator, and you wouldn't be too far off. He used the butt of his rifle to smash the control panel in the security booth, but he didn't go far enough. Two hours after the FBI took over from the L.A.P.D., they had a tape showing Paul Warner propping open the door.

They collared Warner, and he immediately fingered Bob Gato. They collared Bob, and he immediately fingered Lincoln "and some guy named Donny. I think he's a wiseguy." It just so happened that Donny's was under constant surveillance. One particular tape showed Freddie Karen and Bob Gato walking inside. That was enough to act: A little over 24 hours after the heist, the feds knew who did it.

At the same time Freddie Karen was being stuffed into the back of a black sedan, his family and neighbors watching, the former panicking, the latter merely interested, a team went into Donny's. He was standing behind the counter when they entered, and his eyes narrowed.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked.

They read him his rights as they put him in cuffs. "You assholes are always bothering me. I didn't do anything wrong."

Two hours after being taken into the Los Angeles FBI field office, Lincoln Loud sat in an interrogation room, his hands clasped on the table before him and his head hung.

 _I fucked up,_ he thought. _Man, I fucked up_.

His bowels were loose and his heart throbbed in his chest. He was already facing weapons charges for the revolver, and that alone, Agent Benson said, could get him six years. Add to that whatever they were going to heap on him from the heist, and he would probably be in prison for fifty years.

He wouldn't see his child grow up.

He wouldn't be there for them the way his father was there for him.

That prospect made him cry, and that's how agents Wilson and Farris found him when the entered. The former was a broad white man with a receding hairline. The latter was thin, black, and as bald as a cueball. Lincoln looked up when they came in, and wiped his eyes.

"Freddie Karen?" Farris asked.

"Yeah," Lincoln said wetly.

"I'm Agent Farris, and this is Agent Wilson." Wilson nodded, and they sat. "First of all," Farris said, "I got a guy out there saying you're his son and you're a minor, but the information I have here says you're twenty."

"I'm not," Lincoln said miserably.

"How old _are_ you?" Wilson asked.

"Sixteen."

The agents looked at each other. "Pretty impressive," Farris said, looking at Lincoln. "Masterminding the largest heist in American history at your age."

Lincoln's heart twisted. "I didn't mastermind it."

"No?" Farris asked, his eyebrows raising. "Who did?"

Lincoln pressed his lips together and exhaled through his nose. An image of Donny crossed his mind. Donny...the man who helped him, the man who took him under his wing.

"Look, Freddie," Farris said, "you got a girl out there and she's pregnant, right?"

Lincoln nodded.

"You got a kid on the way, you wanna do what's right by them, right?"

Lincoln nodded again.

"Well, here's the deal. You talk to us, help us out, and we'll help _you_ out."

"How?" Lincoln asked.

Farris sighed. "I'm gonna level with you. Donny DeMartini is a pretty bad guy. We've been trying to take him down for a while, and this might be our chance, but we need every little thing we can get on him. That's where you come in. You talk, tell us what you know, and we'll keep you out of the slammer and with your family. If you don't, you're facing a shitload of charges, and that's not even counting what happened in Nebraska...Lincoln."

"That was self-defense," Lincoln said quickly.

Farris spread his hands. "Maybe it was. I wasn't there. The fact remains, you shot a man point blank in his head and then ran. That makes you look like you're guilty of something."

Lincoln sighed.

"Look, Lincoln: You need to do what's best for your family, and rotting in a federal prison for the next forty years isn't what's best, is it?"

Lincoln shook his head. No, it was not.

"Then talk."

Lincoln sighed...and talked.

* * *

It was two days before they let him see Luan, and then there was a pane of Plexiglas between them. When Agent Farris led him into the room, he saw her, her eyes red, and his heart shattered. He sat heavily in the straight back chair facing her and picked up the telephone. She picked up the one on her end and pressed it to her ear. Unshed tears stood in her eyes. Lincoln blinked and looked away. "Hey," he croaked.

"Hey," she said.

Since he agreed to talk, he was being held at the field office instead of at the L.A. County lock-up. "You're a rat now," Farris told him the day before, "and you know what happens to people who rat on the mob?"

Lincoln nodded sickly.

"You'd get a shiv in your guts two minutes after you walked through the door."

He was having trouble sleeping at night. He would lay awake in his cell and stare at the shadows the bars made across the ceiling, thinking of what he did. He was ashamed to find himself...well...ashamed for talking. Donny did so much for him, and here he was helping the feds. What a piece of shit.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"Okay," she said. "You?"

"Alright. I miss you."

She looked at him, tears beginning to spill down her cheeks. "I miss you too."

He blinked back his own tears. "It won't be for long."

"It'll be _too_ long."

He nodded. "I know," he sighed.

After he agreed to help them, the FBI took Luan into protective custody. She was being housed somewhere in the hills and guarded round the clock by a team of agents. She told him about the constant media attention: They were camped outside, and mobbed her when she came in. Lincoln knew all too well what that was like: He got his perp walk yesterday evening. They marched him through the crowd, his hands behind his back and his head bowed, stuffed him into the back of a car, drove him six blocks away, then came back and did it again. Reporters shoved microphones in his face and hurled questions at him. He ignored them.

"I love you," Luan said. She chuckled humorlessly. "I'm _mad_ but I love you." She put her hand on the glass, and Lincoln put his hand up too, covering hers and wishing he could feel her touch.

That night, he lie awake in his bunk, his fingers laced behind his head. What was his life going to look like when this was all over? He and Luan would have to go into the Witness Protection Program, that much was sure. They would probably never be able to see their family again.

And it was all his fault.

He broke down and cried.


	12. For the Rest of Their Lives

The boy with the black hair testified at the Asian-American Airlines Trial on January 29, 2023. The papers printed his name as "Frederick Karen, 20, an associate of the Los Angeles Crime Family." He and Bob Gato were the prosecution's star witnesses. The boy was afraid to face Donny and the others, but he made a deal: This is how he would provide for his family. On the morning he testified, he took the stand and looked out at the sea of faces in the gallery. He spotted his sister and she smiled weakly. She sat in-between their parents. His two oldest sisters were there as well, Lori having flown in from Boston and Leni from Chicago. When he saw them for the first time in two years, he could do nothing but hold them and cry; they did the same. It wasn't until he saw them that he realized just how much he missed them. He hadn't seen his other sisters yet, since he wasn't allowed to leave L.A. and was under the protection of the U.S. Marshalls, and there was no guarantee that he would, because after the trial, he and the girl would be placed in the Witness Protection Program. The government would decide where they went and whether or not they could see their family.

His eyes fell on Donny DeMartini's face, and his heart staggered in his chest. The old man watched him with eyes that blazed with hatred. His lips were tight and bloodless. If looks could kill, the boy thought, I'd be dead on the floor.

The prosecution and defense cross-examined him for the majority of the day, breaking for a lunch time recess and then picking back up where they left off. The defense painted him as a nobody with a grudge against their client over pay. Freddie Karen was employed as a dishwasher and our client fired him. End of story. The boy didn't think the jury was buying it. The circumstantial evidence alone was damning.

Even more damning was when each of the four people who had been taken hostage (not counting Warner, who was bound just to keep up appearances) picked the boy's and Donny's voices out as the ones they heard that night.

The trial continued for three weeks after that, and by the time the jury returned a guilty verdict, the boy and the girl had entered the Witness Protection Program. They were settled in a small town in Michigan, and given new identities. He became Lincoln Loud, and she became Luan Loud.

When they came through the door of their new home at 1216 Franklin Avenue, they were greeted by their siblings; as soon as they stepped across the threshold, nine excited girls mobbed them, nearly knocking them to the ground. Well...they nearly knocked _him_ to the ground. They were easier on Luan, whose stomach had gotten big. Lincoln didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so he did both. "We missed you so much, bro," Luna said as she swept him into a hug that nearly cracked his spine. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, and he could feel her tears on his cheek.

"We missed you too," he said through his own tears.

"Don't ever do that again, Lincoln Loud," Lola said as he bent to hug her. She broke down. "Never leave us again."

"I won't," he said. "I promise."

"I oughta kick your ass," Lynn said, but instead she pulled him roughly into a hug. "How was the mafia?"

Lincoln uttered shocked laughter. "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

"Hey, Linc," Lucy said nervously, "I..."

Lincoln grabbed her and hugged her tight.

"...missed you..." she said breathlessly.

"I missed you too," he said, and laughed. He had never been so happy in his entire life, not even the day he and Luan left and committed their lives to the other.

"When are you due?" Lana asked Luan excitedly. "Is it a boy or girl?"

"March 27th," Luan said. "And we don't know what it's going to be. We want to wait to find out."

"Until it's born?" Lana asked, her eyebrow lifting. "That's strange."

"It's exciting," Lincoln said.

Lana shrugged. "If you say so."

"How about we all go out and celebrate?" Dad asked. "Pizza?"

"Yeah!" Lana cried.

"Alright, come on."

Outside, Lincoln breathed in the fresh air of a new day. Lynn came up beside him and put her arm around his shoulder. "It's good to have you guys back," she said.

"It's good to be back," he said, then glanced at her. "Race you to the sweet spot."

"Oh, it is _on_."

* * *

Life moves on. Donny DeMartini spent five years in federal prison in Kansas, hating Freddie Karen, before he suffered a fatal heart attack: They found him slumped across his bed, his hand clutching his chest and his face twisted in agony. The guards like to say his ghost still haunts A-Block, looking for the 'rat' who sent him to jail.

David Stone married again and his kids came around; no amount of invective can truly extinguish a child's love for their father. By 2030, he was head of a successful private consulting firm and he owned a house in Malibu. Every once in a while, he spoke to Lynn Loud on the phone, and every Christmas, Stone got a card, usually one of those Shutterfly deals with a family picture on the front. Over time, those pictures got more and more crowded.

Lynn and Amber both settled for SUNY and got back together. Young love doesn't always last, but sometimes it does. What each felt in their heart for the other was love full stop, and love full stop never dies, it only grows.

Luan bore Lincoln a son on March 20, 2023. He was a healthy baby, which surprised everyone, including Lincoln. He knew the risks involved in reproducing with his sister. He fully expected their baby to have something wrong; he was prepared to love it anyway.

Lincoln decided not to make his son a junior. He wanted him to be his own person. They named him Lawrence. Lincoln always liked that name. It reminded him of Lawrence of Arabia, the dashing 20th Century adventurer. Each one of his sisters had a cute pet name for him. Leni's was his favorite. She called him "Little Lincy."

"Leni," he explained, "his name isn't Lincoln."

"I know," she chirruped, "but you're Big Lincy and he's Little Lincy."

Leni doted on her Little Lincy. She wanted a family of her own, and while she talked to Kevin about starting one, they mutually decided now wasn't the best time. That made her sad, but it gave her something to look forward to. It would happen sometime, she figured, and she was right: Their son was born on May 18, 2025. They named him Chase Lynn after both of their fathers.

Lori was next. She and her husband Bill (Lincoln had no idea how expensive their wedding was, but he was there and he suspected somewhere between "very" and "insanely") had a son on November 15, 2026.

"Looks like the next generation belongs to the boys," Dad said. Lincoln didn't notice until then, but they all _were_ having boys. Of course, there would probably be siblings, so the dominant gender was yet to be determined. He and Luan wouldn't have anymore; they were young and stupid and took a hell of a risk. They weren't going to do it again. They could always adopt; Little Lincy did need playmates, after all.

Over the coming years, the Loud family grew, and always remained close.

 **The End.**


End file.
